“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.

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This project aims to explore the affective experiences of Black mothering within an anti-black context by analyzing podcast episodes. The project is organized by examining a) socio-historical constructions of race and gender which influenced Black motherhood and mothering experiences during chattel slavery, b) how those meanings have informed contemporary social constructions around Black mothering in opposition to normative mothering and motherhood–defined as white, cisgender, and middle class and c) the ways affect appears in Black mothering strategies today in a country that many argue continues to devalue Black lives The following questions ground this project: 1) How do social constructions around normative motherhood as a raced, gendered, and classed institution continue to impact Black women's mothering experiences, and 2) How do Black mothers narrate their mothering experiences, including their affective experiences of mothering within the U.S.? To capture Black mothers' sentiments around mothering, I used purposive sampling to select 33 podcasts from mothering blogs and a content platform that compiled lists of recommended podcasts of Black mothers speaking on mothering and other related topics. I analyzed the dialogue in 15 episodes of Black mother's reported experiences. I arranged the findings under three categories of affect: the affect of surrender and survival, the affect of agency, and the affect of community which is reflected in the conceptual framework of liberatory parenting. / Master of Science / For my thesis, I investigated how Black mothers parent within the U.S. and explored the feelings that shaped their mothering experiences. In this project, mothering is defined as the actions and strategies. Black women used to navigate raising children within an anti-black society. I first examined the ways chattel slavery influenced mothering for Black women and, from this, informed the social constructions that currently exist around Black mothers. These social constructions created centered on the experiences of white, cisgender, middle-class women, which were defined as normative motherhood and mothering. I argue that the social-historical context surrounding Black motherhood and mothering impacts how it is shown contemporarily. I listened to the voices of Black mothers describing their experiences with mothering from podcasts. I drew from their responses and developed a conceptual framework called "Liberatory Parenting" that represents the feelings that come up for Black mothers, which includes survival and surrender, agency, and community.

Thesis advisor: C. Patrick Proctor / Thesis advisor: Marilyn Cochran-Smith / The increasing diversity of school-aged learners in the United States and the whiteness of the teacher demographic have contributed to renewed calls for the diversification of the K-12 teacher workforce, especially in recent years. Although some attention has been paid to similar issues in teacher education, the weightiness of this imperative is yet to be robustly addressed in the faculty composition and culture of teacher education programs at historically white institutions. More importantly, the pervasiveness of whiteness (not merely white bodies), and the normalcy of anti-Black misandry, have rendered Black males all but absent from teacher education classrooms—as both students and faculty. In many ways, Black males’ trajectory through the social, educational, and professional spheres of US society is replete with perceptions that they are fungible. This is evident in policies, actions, and everyday practices, including murder. Against this background, this practitioner research inquired into the experiences of five Black male doctoral student-instructors in teacher education at historically white institutions, using critical race methodology. Specifically, a BlackCrit Cultural Wealth Framework is used to gain insights into how these five Black male doctoral student-instructors navigated their experiences at the nexus of being Black, male, student, and instructor. Insights from this study reflect three themes evident in their experiences: 1) Tests: Spirit murder and the endemicity of anti-Blackness; 2) Tensions: Body, spirit, and soul work against neoliberal multiculturalism; and 3) Triumphs: Liberatory fantasy, futurities, and survivance. Together, these experiences had various meanings and messages for the Black male doctoral student-instructors to “Get Out.” There are multiple implications for Black males, teacher education, and higher education writ large, particularly regarding recruitment, retention, and persistence. Therefore, this dissertation has the potential to uniquely contribute to research, practice, and policy in various ways. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Thesis advisor: Andrew L. Prevot / Anti-Black racism and white supremacy are critical and interrelated contemporary crises. Achille Mbembe theorizes the confluence of these crises in the concepts of necropolitics and Black reason. But Mbembe does not elaborate the historical relationship between anti-Black necropolitics and Christian thought. I address this aporia in my dissertation while also formulating a theological response through an integrated reading of James Cone and Johann Baptist Metz. In Chapter One, I adopt Mbembe’s framework to contend that the uncritical coöptation of Black reason by white Christianity has resulted in a necropolitical theology, which I demonstrate through an evaluation of three theological loci: anthropology, Christology, and eschatology. Turning to constructive possibilities, chapter two introduces Cone and Metz, whose theologies I read against necropolitical theology. Chapter Two argues that Cone’s revaluation of Blackness as God’s intent for humanity meets Metz’s call for an anthropological revolution of white Christians at the point of conversion: a decision to die to whiteness and become Black with God. Chapter Three emphasizes revelation in Cone’s Christology as an objective Black event; the subjective, ecstatic encounter with the crucified and resurrected Christ; and the necessity of the Cross for theological imagination. Metz’s Holy Saturday Christology, specifically, his paradigmatic memoria passionis, grounded in the descensus ad infernos, complements Cone’s notion of concrete and transformative encounter with Jesus as it emphasizes solidarity with the oppressed. Chapter Four addresses the deformation of Christian hope by necropolitical theology. I integrate Cone’s analysis of Black hope in existential, material, and apocalyptic interpretations of eschatology with Metz’s eschatological proviso which, above all, suggests that one must see the future from the memory of the suffering and the dead. In the United States, I argue that this means white Christians are called to relational praxis in solidarity with oppressed Black communities. In Chapter Five, the conclusion, I look to the pericope on discipleship in Mark 8 in tandem with the theological interventions from Cone and Metz to provide an assessment of what it might mean for white Christians to become Black with God. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

In 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was murdered by Minneapolis Police. As social media and news outlets reported on Floyd's death, racial justice activists began to organize under the Black Lives Matter movement. The United States was also on lockdown due to the global pandemic – COVID-19. Prior researchers have noted that the lockdown was consequential to the sustained longevity of peaceful protests. Additionally, researchers have concluded that this time saw a heightened number of college students from diverse racial backgrounds. This study examines what explicitly motivated Black and White college students to act on racial justice and engage with these movements. More importantly, this study included 11 participants to inquire about what motivated White racial justice activism and to explore Black students' perceptions of these actions from their White peers. This research used an interpretative phenomenological to analyze interviews and a facilitated Social Justice Dialogue circle on racial justice. Despite the lack of research on racial justice activism amongst White students, understanding theories such as Intersectionality and Critical Race is paramount in being aware of countering anti-Blackness. Ultimately, this study produced five findings explaining how Black and White college participants described their perceptions of White racial justice activism and how race socialization contributed to this interpretation. Findings show that White participants possessing marginalized identities interpreted this as Intersectionality and showed more empathy in engaging with racial justice activism while also expressing uncertainty about self-identifying with this advocacy status. Additionally, participants revealed that social media contributed to inauthentic and performative activism post-Floyd's death by using black squares by White content creators lacking a fundamental understanding of anti-Blackness and the Black Lives Matter movement. Participants looked more profound into how society has socialized Whiteness as the normative identity and manifested guilt, fear, and fragility when discussing racialized topics. Lastly, participants revealed that the divisive socio-political climate during the Trump administration significantly contributed to furthering structural racism. At the same time, the global pandemic provided an environment of racial reckoning within the United States. Broader implications for practice and theory are offered to guide recommendations for future research on racial justice activists. / Educational Leadership

This thesis aims to demonstrate how the processes of gentrification and displacement are interrelated processes that invent new ways of perpetuating anti- blackness in the U.S. I demonstrate this through an engagement with Christina Sharpe’s (2016) analysis of the imagery of the wake, the ship, the hold, and the weather as axis points that position Black life in the afterlife of slavery—how the conditions of slavery are ongoing today—presenting the racist encounters at Lake Merritt as illustrative examples. In her most recent book, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Sharpe (2016) deploys an interdisciplinary approach to critically theorize Black subjection and grief through a Black feminist framework, offering care, or what she terms “wake work” as an anecdote to state-sanctioned anti-black violence. She turns to poetry, film, historical archives, and intimate personal experiences to thoroughly articulate how the past is not passed; I reveal how capitalist logic simultaneously structures media representations of Black people in ways that distort what we signify— monstrosity, threat, and criminal are three examples of this distortion—and fix abstract space in hegemonic spatial imaginaries through privatization and commodification. Most importantly, I turn to art and expression—prominent examples being “BBQ’N While Black” and "The Black Spatial Imaginary" as a community response to BBQ Becky and serial displacement in Portland, Oregon respectively—as resistance and examples of place-making practices that Black people have been engaged in historically to articulate their self-hood, belonging, and beauty through Black love. I strive to undertake this work with intentionality and care, which necessitates an undisciplined approach as academic disciplines have historically deployed methodologies that construct narratives on Blackness that reproduce colonial and anti-black violence.

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The aim of this study is to explore the perception and experience of treatment and inclusion that Afroswedish parents have of the Swedish preschool. There are a few similar studies on the subject, but they are either coming in from another perspective or are focused on the theoretical aspect of the matter.  The study has been performed through semi structured, qualitative interviews with seven caregivers with an afroswedish background, who have children in the Swedish preschool, or that just have finished it. Throughout the study we have been using a phenomenographic method among an intercultural theory and Foucault’s theory to analyse and understand how different factors are associated and interact with each other, and how they affect the intercultural encounter. The study shows that their experiences vary depending on numerous factors. One of the most significant is that the individual preschools work for inclusion and diversity is dependent for the parent’s perceptions of the preschool and the pedagogues. The experiences of how the pedagogues treat and talk with the parents and the children are also important for the overall impression of the preschools. The study points out the awareness among the preschool staff and their approach to the matter of diversity as the main important factor for equal treatment and inlcusion.

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