Despite the high incidence of prostate cancer (PC) amongst men of African descent, there is a paucity of qualitative data that explores how Afro-Caribbean men perceive their risk, susceptibility to, and management of this disease. This phenomenological study sought to explore and analyze beliefs about PC in a sample of Afro-Caribbean men who reside in the United States (U.S.). The research questions considered the perceptions, beliefs, and lived experiences of participants. The conceptual framework is a synthesis of the health belief model (HBM) and the theory of reasoned action (TRA), primarily because the TRA allows for a culturally-based relevance and perspective that is lacking in the HBM. Data were collected using in-depth interviews from a purposive sample of 13 U.S. participants from 7 Caribbean territories, who provided detailed descriptions of their perceptions. Data management and inductive, iterative analysis were facilitated through the use of the NVivo 10 software program. This study found that participants had a low level of awareness and education about PC, but they also believed that if PC were caught early, they have a good chance of a long life. There was no indication that culture played a significant role in their attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of the disease. Education about PC should be targeted to this population as well as their significant others. In addition, qualitative research is needed to compare perspectives of Afro-Caribbean, African American, and African men who all reside in the United States. This study may contribute to positive social change by providing practical strategies that may increase screening and early diagnosis among Afro-Caribbean men, thereby reducing the mortality from this disease.

The purpose of this unique critical ethnographic case study is to examine how the development of African Diaspora Literacy informed the African identity of students who identify as Black or African descendants and contribute to the journey toward complete liberation of African descendants worldwide by teaching Black students how to (re)member (Dillard, 2012). To address the problem of some Afro Caribbean American students holding negative, deficit perceptions of all associated with Africa including themselves, I posed the question: In what ways and to what extent does engagement in the Advanced Placement Seminar with African Diaspora Content influence five African-descended high school students’ perception of Africa, the African diaspora, and themselves as African descendants? Homogeneous, convenience sampling was used to identify five African-descended high school students enrolled in the AP Seminar at a College Board-certified predominantly Black high school in a major U.S. urban city. Qualitative data were collected through observations, student-created artifacts, an end-of-course survey, and semi-structured individual and group interviews between Fall 2017 and Spring 2019. African Diaspora Literacy served as the theoretical framework for analysis. Findings suggest that students’ perceptions of Africa, the African diaspora and themselves as African descendants were positively influenced by their 2-year participation in an AP Seminar implemented with a comprehensive, Sankofan, African-centered, pedagogical approach of (re)membering. This informed and strengthened students’ African identity to the extent that their intrinsic motivation to learn more about their African and diaspora heritage positively influenced some of their family members and schoolmates.

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The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) was inaugurated in 2005. It is a regional court that serves Member States of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), an international organization that promotes regional integration in the Caribbean. In this dissertation, I conduct a doctrinal examination and analysis of the human rights jurisprudence of the CCJ, to determine the nature and extent of the Court’s use of International Human Rights Laws and Norms (IHRLN) in its adjudication. Although my main focus is the Court’s human rights decision-making, I also conduct an analysis of some of its wider work, to the extent that this wider work, coupled with the Court’s human rights decision-making, builds an understanding of the Court’s definition of itself and explains the trajectories of the Court as a regional judicial institution. I conduct my doctrinal examination and analysis against the backdrop of three theoretical underpinnings, namely - human rights universalism; transformative justice; and Caribbean political economy and human rights cultural relativism. The goal is to understand how the CCJ, as a young regional Caribbean court, has navigated the region’s historical, socio-cultural, and political contexts, in its use of what are regarded as universalist human rights norms in the law, as it adjudicates domestic human rights and constitutional law issues. I also evaluate where the Court ends up when it navigates these issues, in order to determine impact, and to assess whether the Court’s outcomes can be rationalized or justified. The study demonstrates that this new court has adopted and adapted existing international human rights norms and ideas, notwithstanding some socio-cultural and political challenges in the Caribbean to some of these norms and ideas. My major finding is that the CCJ is inclined towards a strongly universalistic perception and application of IHRLN, and relies quite heavily on these laws and norms to guide its human rights and constitutional law adjudication, although it does this sometimes in a way that indigenizes the application of these IHRLN. In some of the Court’s human rights-related decisions, it has also acted in quite transformative ways, sometimes arriving at outcomes that challenge some Caribbean’s socio-cultural and political norms or expectations, particularly on subjects such as LGBTQ+ rights, the death penalty, political corruption, and the strengthening of aspects of Caribbean Community Law. Through these transformative decisions, the CCJ has disturbed some of the expectations about the contours and boundaries of Caribbean constitutional law, and in places, has formulated new principles and doctrines which signal a clear yearning to use IHRLN to take Caribbean law to new frontiers. It does this without completely disregarding Caribbean socio-cultural and political realities, but by sometimes mediating them. This approach by the Court demonstrates independence and reflects an absence of the suspicions of some IHRL norms and ideas that are oftentimes reflected in the political economy dynamics of the wider Caribbean region. It likewise does not signify an embrace of some of the more well-known cultural reticence and relativist attitudes to some aspects of international human rights norms found in some quarters of the Caribbean. Instead, the study reveals a more nuanced positioning by the Court, in its human rights jurisprudence. The result, this dissertation has found, is a Court that has (a) accomplished critical legal reform in important areas of the law, (b) empowered CARICOM citizens in a number of ways, and (c) strengthened respect for indigenous regional institutions in the wider politique of Caribbean regional identity and integration. The Court has accomplished these goals through calculated persuasion, rationality, and normative reasoning. The contribution of this dissertation is three-fold. Firstly, it formulates and presents a rigorous analysis of how the CCJ operationalizes IHRLN in its work. This is done, drawing on the literature on human rights universalism, cultural relativism, and transformative justice, and against the backdrop of regional human rights reticences that I explore, and which are premised on certain perceptions of the hegemonic and neo-colonial tendencies and potential of some IHRLN. Secondly, the thesis offers an in-depth and critical assessment and evaluation of the CCJ’s impact on the human rights jurisprudence of the region as a whole. Finally, it offers an in-depth analysis of how the Court’s work has so far contributed to the development of Caribbean law.

This project was an inventory and analysis of human remains from the Aklis archaeological site (12VAm1-42), located in the Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. The human remains inventoried during this project were collected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and MSU during surface collection and emergency salvage excavations at Aklis. The statistical analysis of the data focused on the minimum number of individuals (MNI) per square meter, the degree of long bone completion, skeletal element counts across excavated features, and the degree of weathering. Results indicate that the assemblage curated at MSU includes a minimum of 14 individuals, and the remains are heavily weathered and highly fragmented. The data reflects increased fragmentation and weathering in human remains recovered from erosional features as opposed to correlation with geographic area, and that there are differences in skeletal element counts across excavated areas of the site.

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