Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 267-310). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A..)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Jerrilyn McGregory, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English.. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Dec. 4, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 72 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Texte remanié de: Ph.D.--University of Minnesota, 1969. / Bibliogr. p. 161-172. Index.

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Do works of art exert their influence on us across time and culture? The so-called "godfather of the Harlem Renaissance," Alain Locke, argued that Black artworks would lead to racial uplift, so he thought art crossed cultural boundaries, at least. In fact, Locke argued again and again for a universal appeal in art while at the same time expounding a thoroughgoing psychological approach to value theory, including aesthetic value. The two seemingly disparate aesthetic theories adverted by Locke have not been aggregated into a unified system. This work sets out to do just that with a review of Locke's early aesthetics as evidenced by his value theory, and his later popular writings that adumbrate his insistence on a universal appeal in art.

The study critically investigated the concept of ―Double Consciousness‖ in selected African-American autobiographies. In view of the latter, W.E.B. Du Bois defined double consciousness as a condition of being both black and American which he perceived as the reason black people were/are being discriminated in America. The study demonstrated that creative works such as Harriet Jacobs‘ Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl: Told by Herself, Frederick Douglass‘ The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois‘ The Souls of Black Folk, Booker T. Washington‘s Up from Slavery, Langston Hughes‘ The Big Sea, Zora Neale Hurston Dust Tracks on a Road, Malcolm X‘s The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Maya Angelou‘s All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes, Cornel West‘s Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud and bell hooks‘ Bone Black affirm double consciousness as well as critiqued the concept, revealing new layers of identities and contested sites of struggle in African-American society. The study used a qualitative method to analyse and argue that there are ideological shifts that manifest in the creative representation of the idea of double consciousness since slavery. Some relevant critical voices were used to support, complicate and question the notion of double consciousness as represented in selected autobiographies. The study argued that there are many identities in the African-American communities which need attention equal to that of race. The study further argued that double consciousness has been modified and by virtue of this, authors suggested multiple forms of consciousness. / English Studies

<p>The aim of the study is to investigate how double-consciousness operates through contrastive color imagery in Nella Larsen’s novel Quicksand. A focal point of the analysis is to show how Larsen thematizes the ability to benefit from bright colors and how color choice determines the quality and level of freedom in life.</p><p>Together with W. E. B. Du Bois’s theory of double-consciousness, a few other literary works by writers of the Harlem Renaissance have been considered in order to further support my arguments. I link these other writers’ perspectives to Quicksand and to the novel’s theme of color as a path to freedom.</p><p>In Quicksand, a broader path of colors, more bright than dull, leads to freedom, as is made evident through the novel’s connection of bright colors with Harlem’s freedom of expression. Furthermore, a narrow path of colors is contrastively figured as the course towards tragedy, which is clearly seen in the novel through the example of the protagonist Helga’s “sinking” due to an absence of color.</p>

I am baffled each time someone asks me, “Who is Jessie Fauset?” As I delved into critical work written on Fauset, I found her critics dismissed her work because they read them as bad fairytales that showcase the lives of middle-class Blacks. I respectfully disagree. It is true that her novels concentrate on the Black middle-class; they also focus on the realities of Black women, at a time when they were branching out of their homes and starting careers, not out of financial necessity but arising from their desire for working. They establish the start of what Patricia Hill Collins later coined “Black feminism” through strong female characters that refuse to be defined by society. This thesis seeks to add Jessie Fauset to the canon of Black feminists by using Collins’ theories on Black feminism to analyze Fauset’s first two novels, There Is Confusion and Plum Bun.

Zugl.: München, Univ., Diss., 2003

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008.