Prior to the fall of 2011, only eight African American female playwrights had ever been produced on Broadway. In this context, the 2011-2012 Broadway season made theatre history when it featured the work of three black women playwrights: Stick Fly by Lydia Diamond, The Mountaintop by Katori Hall and an adaptation of The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess by Suzan-Lori Parks. This project, which focuses on Diamond’s Stick Fly and Hall’s The Mountaintop as Broadway debuts of new plays, seeks to situate these works within a post-black aesthetic that rejects narrow and limiting constructions of blackness. This project also recognizes the significance of Diamond and Hall as female African American playwrights whose texts allow for complex representations of black womanhood, and proposes that the relationship between post-blackness and black feminism is fluid and permeable, allowing us to better understand both the meanings of blackness and the experiences of black women. / text

“A Hip-Hop Joint: Thinking Architecturally About Blackness” beings by recognizing that hip-hop visual culture’s rapid global expansion over the last four decades complicates its lasting connection to blackness. Instead of arguing that blackness is the content of contemporary hip-hop, this project considers blackness as the aesthetic that coheres the diffuse genre. Thus, blackness serves a distinctly architectural function in hip-hop visual culture—it is the architectonic logic of the genre. Therefore, this project illustrates the value of alternative definitions of blackness; specifically, this dissertation approaches blackness as a distinct set of spatial relations that can be observed in the many places and spaces hip-hop is produced and consumed. “A Hip-Hop Joint” argues blackness and hip-hop exist in a recursive loop: blackness generates the spatial organization of hip-hop and hip-hop is so racially charged that it produces blackness. As a result, hip-hop images can serve as the site for unexpected encounters with blackness—specifically, visualizing blackness in spaces that are not occupied by actual black bodies. Because visual culture organizes space through the positioning of the black body, this dissertation argues hip-hop images that defy the presumed appearance and visibility of blackness are not only capable of reconfiguring image relations, but also the aesthetics of anti-blackness. This project relies on black studies, visual culture studies, and architectural theory. The visual objects analyzed include: music videos directed by Hype Williams, Beyoncé’s “Formation,” WorldStarHipHop.com, William Pope.L’s “Claim,” the trailer for Apollo Brown’s Thirty Eight album, and “Until the Quiet Comes” directed by Kahlil Joseph.

The Black Consciousness philosophy with its focus on black solidarity, the exclusion of whites from the black struggle for liberation, being consciously black and black self-determination, amongst some of the principles espoused by the Black Consciousness philosophy may prima-facie seem to be advocating a parochial politics of race or even a racially exclusionist politics obsessed with cultural authenticity and racial peculiarity. Black Consciousness from such an optic may seem to be more in line with other race centred systems such as apartheid based on white superiority as opposed to a politics that rejects a race centred approach to political life. Certain readings of Black Consciousness reflect the philosophy as espousing a more regressive as opposed to a progressive liberatory politics. Furthermore, Black Consciousness with its focus on race its critics will argue is not in line with a politics of non-racialism which seeks a total rejection of race. However, such an understanding of non-racialism is a very limited and unsophisticated one as it entails a rejection of race without first engaging with the concrete reality of race, while also assuming that a rejection of race entails integration. Indeed, it may be a great goal to attain a society in which race does not matter and in which it is not a determining factor in the life of any individual. Yet, to not see race when race has had and continues to have a profound impact on South African society, especially the poor black majority, may serve to be more regressive than progressive. In a society where inequality manifests along racial lines a hastily sought integration may not serve to attain the desired outcome of a genuine non-racial society. Equality thus becomes a central perquisite to make possible the attainment of a non-racial society unhindered by the limitations of white superiority and black inferiority. With the persistence of inequality accompanied by white domination and acquiescing blacks a non-racial society will serve to be an illusion. Biko, through his articulation of the Black Consciousness philosophy sought the attainment of a radical egalitarianism; this from the Black Consciousness optic being the condition upon which a non-racial politics and society could be forged. Black Consciousness has the ability to create a truly non-racial subject, its sophisticated conception of race which conceives of race as being consciously contrived can serve to illustrate the implicit non-racial outlook of the Black Consciousness philosophy. Through the project of Black Consciousness the end goal could indeed be perceived as being a radical egalitarian non-racial society. The overall tenor is that Black Consciousness complements non-racialism more than it contradicts it.

The World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and related intolerance celebrated in the city of Durban in 2001 was not the first international forum addressing the topic of racism in different countries of the world. However, it marked a pivotal before and after in the arena of racial politics in some countries of Latin America. With a special focus on indigenous communities and peoples of African descent, this international platform brought together governments, civil society organizations, and stakeholders alike urging them to recognize the pervasiveness of racism and racial discrimination in their countries. In the specific case of Peru, the Conference was followed by the creation of a number of national institutions for the advancement of Afrodescendants and other ethnic minorities, and the integration of the existing legislation on racism and discrimination. This work seeks to analyze the political shift experienced by Afrodescendants in Peru that took them from an unrecognized demographic group to a racial minority protected by the law and with an affirmed political subjectivity.

This study attempts to establish the cross-currents of African American literary traditions and an emerging African American graphic novel aesthetic. A close analysis of the visuality foreground in the visual/textual space of the graphic novel will provide insight into how the form of the graphic novel reconciles and revises more traditional textual literary elements. Such motifs and tropes as the visuality of slave portraiture, Gates’ trope of the talking book, and the paradox of invisibility/visibility within African American creative registers will be used to highlight the creative tradition inaugurated by the African American graphic novel. Each of these elements generally associated with African American textual production, become central thematic concerns with the graphic work of artists such as Ho Che Anderson, Kyle Baker, Dwayne McDuffie, Roland Laird, Taneshia Laird, and Elihu Bey. From the historical biography of Anderson’s King and Baker’s Nat Turner, to the broad history of Laird, Laird, and Bey’s Still I Rise, and finally within the traditional superhero graphic novel of Dwayne McDuffie’s Icon, a definite tradition of African American graphic novels emerge. Understanding how these graphic novels associate themselves with, and ultimately revise, the literary aesthetics of African American texts makes possible the fuller examination of African American graphic novels as a specialized literary tradition.

Let me share with you Ubuntu oralities. These stories will connect us in a familial dialogue about how we can and are regenerating beyond neo colonialism by using Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a philosophical and ethical system of thought, from which definitions of humanness, togetherness and social politics of difference arise. Ubuntu can also be viewed as a complex worldview that holds in tension the contradictions of trying to highlight our uniqueness as human beings among other human beings. My interpretation of our Indigenous Ubuntu knowledge communicates how my understanding of Ubuntu is influenced by my Maseko Ngoni and Shona ethnic identities. Another influence of my understanding of our Ubuntu worldview comes from the African languages of my familial communities which are the main tools that I draw on for accessing our shared meaning and creating new shared meaning. The geopolitical experience of being Black in Africa and then leaving Africa for the West also has influenced my understanding of Ubuntu. These are my strengths and limitations in engaging Ubuntu. I give you this information because it is not my aim to create a false dichotomy about Blackness; rather, it is my aim to enter our global contemporary Black academic discourse with another form of remembering Blackness. My remembering is grounded in my own experience which has found constancy through Ubuntu languages and other social symbolic expressions. This cultural transmission process has allowed knowledge from my ancestors to cascade down to me. I believe that by sharing our social stories we build collective confidence to engage and challenge each other with respectful curiosity and, above all, with love. Love is the expression of relational care for our interconnectedness, which is the basis for researching our truths in our shared humanity. Ubuntuness has many ways of transmitting knowledge. This being said, for this work I will focus on how we can share our fragmented memories through our stories of family, community and nationhood, as a way of better understanding our Ubuntuness. This is the process of love creating possibilities beyond pain, isolation, abandonment and hate.

Let me share with you Ubuntu oralities. These stories will connect us in a familial dialogue about how we can and are regenerating beyond neo colonialism by using Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a philosophical and ethical system of thought, from which definitions of humanness, togetherness and social politics of difference arise. Ubuntu can also be viewed as a complex worldview that holds in tension the contradictions of trying to highlight our uniqueness as human beings among other human beings. My interpretation of our Indigenous Ubuntu knowledge communicates how my understanding of Ubuntu is influenced by my Maseko Ngoni and Shona ethnic identities. Another influence of my understanding of our Ubuntu worldview comes from the African languages of my familial communities which are the main tools that I draw on for accessing our shared meaning and creating new shared meaning. The geopolitical experience of being Black in Africa and then leaving Africa for the West also has influenced my understanding of Ubuntu. These are my strengths and limitations in engaging Ubuntu. I give you this information because it is not my aim to create a false dichotomy about Blackness; rather, it is my aim to enter our global contemporary Black academic discourse with another form of remembering Blackness. My remembering is grounded in my own experience which has found constancy through Ubuntu languages and other social symbolic expressions. This cultural transmission process has allowed knowledge from my ancestors to cascade down to me. I believe that by sharing our social stories we build collective confidence to engage and challenge each other with respectful curiosity and, above all, with love. Love is the expression of relational care for our interconnectedness, which is the basis for researching our truths in our shared humanity. Ubuntuness has many ways of transmitting knowledge. This being said, for this work I will focus on how we can share our fragmented memories through our stories of family, community and nationhood, as a way of better understanding our Ubuntuness. This is the process of love creating possibilities beyond pain, isolation, abandonment and hate.

Within the past decade, two major events raised the national profile of the experiences of black youth and the realities of racism in the city of Kingston, Ontario. The first event occurred in the spring of 2001 and involved the dramatic “high-risk takedown” by Kingston Police of two innocent black male youths who were wrongly profiled as suspects in an assault case. The second event involved the subsequent release of a report commissioned by Kingston Police which confirmed that black male youth in Kingston were almost four times more likely to be stopped and questioned by Kingston police than any other racial group (Wortley and Marshall, 2005). This research, while not addressed to the specifics of racial profiling and policing in Kingston, focuses on the marginalized voices of male and female black youth in Kingston. Eight youth volunteered to participate in this study. Participants took part in one-on-one interviews with the researcher and three participated in a follow-up focus group session. Themes explored in the one-on-one interview and focus group sessions included factors influencing the construction of black identities within a predominantly white city, the negotiation of friendships and relationships, and interactions with public authorities such as teachers and the police. This study addresses the various ways in which black youth, male and female, experience life in their city – at home, at school, and in the community – and how they feel their blackness affects these experiences. It highlights the perspectives and insights of black Kingston youth. The findings of this research can help us better understand how black identities develop in small Canadian cities, how blackness is policed, and the internal and external “regimes of power” that govern these relations. (Foucault, 1977, p.112). The study offers a medium by which these voices may be heard and may contribute to long-term community-based anti-racism work in Kingston. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2010-12-30 23:08:45.145

This study analyses how Stargate SG-1 perpetuates dominant representations of whiteness, and how whiteness is used as a marker of racial identity in American popular culture. The popular science fiction television show Stargate SG-1 continually uses the nonwhite alien to juxtapose the seeming superiority of the white human, with white Americans acting as trusted gatekeepers for the entire planet. Whiteness becomes almost invisible and normative as the alien “other” requires assistance or containment enacted through SG-1’s adventures “off-world”. I also examine the representation of superior white aliens as an extension of these dominant white discourses. It is through the study of the constructed nature of “race” that whiteness is made visible. As represented in Stargate SG-1 whiteness discourses contribute to and reflect “common sense” constructions of race within U.S. society. This examination of Stargate SG-1 illuminates how negotiations of whiteness are constructed within United States dominant cultural discourses as a means to exclude the “other”.

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