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The thesis investigates the ways in which James Baldwin, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison’s fictional portrayals of forms of love, eroticism and sexuality that are excluded or prohibited by social norms, destabilise heteronormativity as the only legitimate option for non-harmful and pleasurable sensual and sexual expression. It aims to situate Baldwin, Walker and Morrison in a continuum of African American authors, beginning with Harlem Renaissance writer Bruce Nugent – the first African American writer to openly explore the relationship between homosexuality and Blackness – that have examined the intertwining issues of transgressive sexuality and race in increasingly explicit ways. By highlighting the ways in which Baldwin, Walker and Morrison decentre heteronormativity, the project aims to uncover how their novels expose the systems of power and knowledge by which racial forms of oppression are maintained, thereby debunking both the notion of Black “authenticity” and Black sexual stereotypes. Finally, the project hopes to show how the process of “queering” heteronormativity in these ways effectively serves to legitimise all forms of love, eroticism and sexuality that are non-harmful, opening up a new trajectory for contemporary twentieth-century authors who delve into these themes. Theoretical Approach: The thesis will argue for a queer reading of Baldwin, Walker and Morrison’s novels that underscores the writers’ treatment of sexuality as a discursive construct. Specifically, this theoretical perspective looks to their legitimisation of alternative forms of love, eroticism and sexuality that are non-harmful – a process that, in each case, serves to counteract and denaturalise White heteronormativity as the only rightful option for sexual desire and practice. Through this approach, the thesis strives to reveal how by working to legitimise such taboo expressions, these writers deconstruct the idea of the “other” as aberrant, thus calling attention to the specific political and moral systems by which love, eroticism and sexuality are judged in the modern Western world. Chapter Break Down: Chapters one and two of the project situate my argument in the context of critical earlier American writing encompassing canonical fiction, including political protest and African American folklorist novels, political polemics, Puritan captivity narratives, slave narratives, political essays, and experimentalist fiction. Together, these chapters provide a detailed overview of discourses surrounding sexuality, considering what is socially determined to be sexually “perverse” as a shifting concept, the meaning of which changes in tandem with changes in social and historical context. They also extensively analyse Black cultural specificity, examining both the sociological genesis of Black sexual stereotypes that led in part to the justification of the modern slave trade and the subsequent impact of slavery on African American sexual practices. In chapter three, the literary analysis begins with a consideration of the broadened possibilities of sexual acceptability Baldwin puts forth in his anti-protest style of fiction, by examining relationships between characters that do not fit conventional racial or sexual stereotypes, their social contexts, and the narrative perspectives employed by the author. Chapter four examines how Walker’s work carries forward Baldwin’s ideas, by further opening up the spectrum of socially acceptable forms of love, eroticism and sexuality through her presentation of an even wider array of erotically transgressive characters, and her effort to write about them during sustained periods of American conservatism. In chapter five, I examine how Morrison complicates the traditional understanding of what constitutes legitimate sexuality by infusing positive elements into sensual and sexual acts that appear to be nothing other than violent, illegal or psychologically regressive, thereby exposing the impact of social and historical context on the individual, further emphasising the changing and discursive nature of sexuality. The thesis finally argues that Baldwin, Walker and Morrison’s particular depictions of alternative sexuality roll back into a bigger idea of human experience that claims as necessary a re-thinking of social norms based on ethical considerations, rather than arbitrary social codes of morality that lead to both racial and sexual discrimination. Their novels thus ultimately involve us in human issues of justice and responsibility beyond the boundaries of race and sexuality.

L’année 1963 est centrale pour le mouvement des droits civiques puisque la popularité de Martin Luther King donne un nouvel élan aux luttes afro-américaines. En effet, c’est au mois d’août 1963 à Washington que le pasteur King prononce son discours I Have a Dream. Bien qu’il s’attaque aux lois « Jim crow » et à sa doctrine Separate but equal qui ségrége la société américaine. Par son message non-violent empreint d’amour, d’espoir et de résilience, King devient un porte-parole emblématique du mouvement des droits civiques et le porteur d’une pensée structurante au sein des luttes afro-américaines dans les années 1960, soit la pensée intégrationniste. À cette époque, le mouvement des droits civiques devient un mouvement populaire porté par différents acteurs. C’est le cas de l’écrivain afro-américain James Baldwin qui fait paraître en 1963 son essai The Fire Next Time. De manière plus spécifique, on peut dire que son essai The Fire Next Time vulgarise le discours intégrationniste. Nous proposons d’évaluer, dans notre mémoire, la contribution de James Baldwin et de son essai The Fire Next Time paru en 1963 à l’idéologie intégrationniste. D’abord, nous aborderons certains éléments de l’histoire afro-américaine concernant les premières formes de résistance des Noirs américains (1917- 1954). Ensuite, nous tenterons de cerner les éléments compris dans l’argumentaire de Baldwin faisant en sorte que son essai The Fire Next Time et les idées qui y sont comprises, sont souvent associés à l’idéologie intégrationniste. Pour finir, nous verrons que l’amour est l’ultime solution au « problème noir », selon Baldwin. Dans ce chapitre, nous nous intéresserons au concept d’amour et aux définitions qu’en donnent Martin Luther King et Baldwin.

In my artistic practice, I emphasize personal and pan-cultural anxieties regarding civilization and the environment as an impetus for work in sculpture, video, and drawing. By locating marginal microcosmic subject matter that tellingly exhibits macrocosmic global dread, I seek to capture and distill our overwhelming eco-socio-political anxiety into a portrait of a society at a point in its history when the specter of nameless impending disaster weighs pressingly on the collective psyche. This thesis is supplementary to my work of sculpture in the Graduate School of the Arts Thesis Exhibition at the Anderson Gallery opening on April 27th, 2007. The work was entitled Busted Butte Or the Evening Deadness in the West, and images of it are contained within the text. This document was created in Microsoft Word 2004.

This essay explores how James Baldwin’s short story Going to Meet the Man depicts racist attitudes toward African-Americans in American society. Further, this essay also shows how racism is linked to a circulation of emotions that unconsciously generates a xenophobic nation affecting even those who implicitly are regarded as genuine citizens of that community. By using two theoretical perspectives, Sara Ahmed’s theory of affective economies and some of Freud’s concepts from psychoanalysis, this essay analyzes Baldwin’s text and discovers how the American nation needs to accept and recognize its racist history, just as a child needs to acknowledge his or her fear when experiencing traumatic events. Baldwin’s narrative reinforces racist stereotypes while at the same time using the text to write back to a society that at the time of writing had not expected, but indeed needed, an African-American man to publish a book from a white man’s perspective.

Albert Baldwin Wood and his screw pumps modernized New Orleans by bringing flood-free streets and cleaner water to the city while providing the potential for growth by pumping swamp lands dry. While Wood was never part of the local Progressive movement, his work with the pumps fit with Progressive initiatives for modernization. At first, the screw pumps removed rain water from the streets. Then New Orleans expanded the drainage to include sewerage removal and water purification. The pumps successfully drained thousands of acres of land once considered uninhabitable swamp land. This additional land extended New Orleans city limits but also aided in the acceleration of residential segregation. Cities from around the world used the designs for the screw pump and consulted Wood for advice on drainage systems.

James Arthur Baldwin (1924- 1987) is one of the two major writers who have dared write about black gay men and from a black gay perspective. However, his fame as a racial spokesman and his insightful analyses of race relations in America tend to distract attention from the fact that he has been one of the most important homosexual writers of the twentieth century. Intolerance and homophobia among black and white Americans often led to a misinterpretation or misevaluation of James Baldwin's novels. James Baldwin was very courageous to come out as a black homosexual writer during the period of the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement. However, his awareness of racism and homophobia in the American society, and his difficult position of being a public figure and a spokesman for the Afro-Americans left its traces in his novels and influenced his novel writing career. The purpose of the present study is to show that out of intolerance, ignorance, and homophobia the evaluators of James Baldwin's novels often did him no justice. Baldwin through his novel writing developed a homosexual consciousness for himself. This struggle of coming-out was his personal struggle and it was marked by his burden of the doubly oppressed. I argue that Baldwin's search for an identity as a black homosexual writer is reflected in his writing. He constructed his identity through his writing. This study attempts to show that Baldwin's development of a homosexual identity took place in stages during his novel writing career. An analysis of the novels Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953), Giovanni's Room (1956), Another Country (1962), and Just Above My Head ( 1979) will demonstrate his movement from dealing with homosexuality as an underlying theme to using it as a tool to protest against any kinds of labels in the American society. Baldwin believed that discrimination cannot cease as long as the categorization of people through artificial constructs such as the "Negro" or the "homosexual" exists.

This thesis traces the emergence of the American policewomen's movement through the career of Portland, Oregon's Lola Greene Baldwin, the first such officer hired by a municipality. It recounts the conditions which marked Baldwin's transition from a volunteer moral purity worker to a professional urban vice detective. The thesis connects Baldwin and her new profession to the Progressive era's social hygiene impulse. It considers how government absorption of the social hygiene agenda influenced the enforcement attitudes and methods of the early policewoman. Further, this work looks at the way Baldwin functioned within the bureaucracies and political structures of her environment. Baldwin's biographical history was obtained from her answers on a federal civil service application. The detective's original police department logs were a key element in researching her activities. Correspondence from the Portland city archives between the policewoman and five mayors and numerous police chiefs enhanced the information from her daily entries, as did a thorough perusal of contemporary newspaper items. Progressive-era city ordinances, reports of the Portland Vice Commission, and various memoranda of city council and local social hygiene committees also proved valuable. Miscellaneous personal documents and newspaper stories covering Baldwin's federal policing service during World War I were bolstered by articles from Social Hygiene. Baldwin professionalized women's police work by convincing Portland to pay for vice prevention and investigation formerly sponsored by private charities. She developed professional standards and procedures such as detailed case files, periodic statistical reports, and a specialized parole system for female delinquents. The female vice officer freely offered her ideas to other cities and helped form a national association of policewomen in 1912. Baldwin adopted social hygiene ideas through authoring laws which segregated females from sources of immorality in amusement and employment environments. The policewoman also championed detention homes for sexually precocious young women and special facilities for venereal cases. She fully accepted, moreover, social hygiene doctrine that prostitution was a medical as well as moral threat mandating complete abolition. When city authorities lagged in pursuing prostitution abatement, Baldwin helped establish a vice commission which forced appropriate action. National recognition of the female detective's vice policing won her appointment as a World War I federal military training facility protective agent. This work involved the detention of thousands of West Coast women and girls on mere suspicion of immorality. Baldwin returned to her police job in Portland after her federal task ended in late 1920. Used to the complete social control afforded by martial law, however, the policewoman became discouraged by postwar moral laxity in the Rose City, and retired in early 1922. The American urban policewomen's movement was engendered as a government effort to maintain traditional female purity in the modernizing environment of the Progressive era. Baldwin personified the transition from religious-based notions which relied on moral suasion to methods of modern professional social control which codified traditional standards and made them relevant to prevailing cultural and social conditions. The policewoman used the agenda and momentum of the social hygiene movement to empower herself and her new profession. Baldwin took advantage of growing acceptance of women as necessary partners in the management of a "parental" state. She embodied elements of "social feminism" because she believed that females were inherently different and needed state protection. Her insistence on professional equality with male cohorts, however, contradicted this pattern, as did her support of woman suffrage. Although Baldwin never reconciled to the vast cultural changes of her time, she left a proud legacy of professionalism to her daughters in modern law enforcement.

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My study highlights a link of U.S. American hypermasculinity running through Cormac McCarthy's two novels Blood Meridian (1985) and All the Pretty Horses (1992), Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977), and James Baldwin's Another Country (1960). My literary interpretations of these texts suggest that U.S. American hypermasculine man originated in the American frontier and transformed into a definition of hegemonic masculinity embraced by many southern rural American men. These southern rural American men then concocted the myth of the black rapist in order to justify the mass murder of African American men after Reconstruction, inadvertently creating a figure more hypermasculine than themselves. Many black men embraced the myth of the black rapist as well as the baser patriarchal aspects of white male southern power. Consequently, black hypermasculinity evolved into the paragon of American hypermasculinity. Failed Heroes further argues that some protagonists in postwar American literature heroically fail in order not to perpetuate hypermasculinities. Continuing a modernist trend of anti-heroism, the selected protagonists develop into marginalized men due to their failure to live up to hypermasculine societal expectations. The protagonists' failure to perpetuate hypermasculinities proves heroic since it illustrates the destructiveness of these sensibilities; as a result, a sense of ironic heroism emerges from the narratives. In Blood Meridian, set in the mid-nineteenth century U.S. American West, the kid fails heroically to construct a masculine identity outside of the textual order of the judge, indicting the hypermasculine philosophies of the judge and calling into question the book's violence. In no way is the kid a classic hero; rather, his collapse exists as a direct critique of the judge's destructive philosophies. In All the Pretty Horses, set in the mid-twentieth century U.S. American South, John Grady fails to actualize his cowboy fantasy, but proves heroic in exposing its danger and destructiveness. At the end of the novel he vanishes into the countryside a failure, but unlike the mythic cowboy, he assumes the role of heroic failure because his narrative contributes to the relinquishment of a destructive male myth. In Song of Solomon, set in Ohio and Virginia during Reconstruction and the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements, Milkman Dead functions as a black man who has the opportunity to break free from choking definitions of black masculinity. In the end he fails to break free and flies to Africa, leaving his family and his only hope at real freedom, his aunt Pilate, to die. Continuing a cycle of male flight at the expense of his family, community, and cultural guide renders him a failure. Morrison's final critique of hypermasculinity positions Pilate as the failed hero and shifts the emphasis of the novel to the women who represent victims of kinship systems and the incest taboo. The incest in the novel functions as a metaphor for Pilate's philosophy that black identity ought to come from black culture, a notion I call cultural incest. Another Country, set in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s, details the plight of an urban African American man struggling to reconcile his homosexual desire with the black hypermasculine cool pose he dons as overcompensation. Rufus Scott's death proves heroic as a critique of the rigid definitions of urban black masculinity. African Americans, and by extension all Americans, might employ their U.S. American history of oppression as a platform for a new vision of masculinity based on heteronormative failure and queerness. The association of blackness with oppression, and as a result non-normative sexuality, presents an opportunity to redefine blackness as abjection. The very failure of African Americans in measuring up to destructive notions of hypermasculinity might exist as a new definition of blackness and masculinity for all Americans.