The subject of this thesis is the temporary and travelling exhibition Velorios y santos vivos: comunidades negras, afrocolombianas, raizales y palenqueras [Wakes and living saints: Black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal and Palenquero communities]. ‘Velorios,’ as many people involved in the project referred to it, portrayed Afro-Colombian funerals and devotions to Catholic saints, and was on display in the temporary exhibitions hall in the National Museum of Colombia, in Bogotá, from 21 August to 3 November 2008. Before it closed, a travelling version was designed that began to go around the country in 2009. When I wrote this thesis, ‘the Itinerante,’ as the travelling version was referred to at the Museum, was still available as one of the displays that its Travelling Exhibitions Programme (TEP) offered to the public. I use Velorios and the Itinerante as the main ‘characters’ in an ethnography of the National Museum of Colombia, where I explore the different instances in which this major exhibition produced visibilities and invisibilities regarding the place of Afro-Colombian people in the nation. As a museum, this institution is responsible for managing, researching and displaying its four collections (of art, history, ethnography and archaeology) but also, as one of the Ministry of Culture’s ‘special administrative units,’ it is in charge of designing and implementing policies that regulate all the other museums in Colombia. This is in keeping with national and international official legislation regarding cultural heritage, like the National Culture Plan and UNESCO’s resolutions, and in support of the development and strengthening of museums, museology and museum design in the whole country. Here I show what these responsibilities and duties translate into on the ground. The themes that the thesis explores are i) (in)visibility, ii) participatory collaboration and, also as the means to approach these themes, iii) documents and documentation. They are all components of the kind of curatorship that this museum exhibition conveyed.

L’esclavage noir en Amérique espagnole des XVIe et XVIIe siècles à travers les documents juridiques. Dans le cadre de ce travail, nous avons traité dans un premier temps la question des différentes justifications de l’esclavage depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’à l’Époque moderne par les théories aristotéliciennes de l’esclavage par nature, les écrits bibliques ainsi que la question raciale telle qu'elle pouvait être perçue à l'époque. La condamnation officielle de l'esclavage des autochtones américains finalement prononcée par les autorités espagnoles va laisser toutes la place au trafic des esclaves d'origine africaine même si le gros des transactions sera laissé aux marchands portugais qui se lancent dans un commerce à grande échelle qui va durer plus de trois siècles. Dans ce contexte, on analyse comment l’homme noir devient « l’autre » depuis le moment de sa capture et de sa vente en Afrique puis durant sa captivité et durant la traversée avant sa revente en Amérique, comment la personnalité ainsi que le droit naturel à la liberté et se gouverner lui-même lui sont ôtées et niées. Il subit une privation générale de ses droits qu’ils soient naturels ou positifs. Par conséquent, l’esclavage commence par un processus de plusieurs phases de transitions brutales jusqu’à son arrivée en Amérique espagnole.Les traductions et transcriptions de documents authentiques et inédits glanés dans les différents dépôts d'archives nous ont permis de composer un corpus de lois de l’esclavage noir le plus exhaustif possible. Son étude approfondie nous permet de dégager des tendances et observer la complexité du monde colonial. En effet, l’Amérique espagnole des XVIe et XVIIe siècle est un monde violent où la personnalité de l’homme noir est saisie presque uniquement à travers la brutalité, notamment le port d’arme, l’ivresse, les vols, les regroupements dans la rue de jour ou de nuit et les fuites qui le mènent à créer des palenques durablement installés dans les montagnes, ce qui provoque l’inquiétude grandissante chez les Espagnols, en peine pour canaliser cette caste noir et mulâtre toujours plus nombreuse en particulier dans les pôles urbains. Ainsi, il est intéressant de montrer quelles sont les relations qu’entretiennent les différents groupes en présence. Les relations sociales en particulier entre Indiens et Noirs sont d’une dureté inattendue même si parfois des élans de solidarités contre l’ennemi commun apparaissent. Grâce au rôle d’intermédiaires entre leur maître et les Indiens, les Noirs dans un sentiment nouveau de supériorité numérique, s’assimilent aux Espagnols et commettent de nombreux abus et mauvais traitements à l’égard des natifs par mimétisme et phénomène compensatoire. Ainsi que nous proposons à travers l’étude de différents documents juridiques, on ne peut lire ce monde de manière manichéenne où la place de chacun n’est pas figée mais plutôt en perpétuel mouvement est composé d’Espagnols oisifs, de Noirs qui s’enfuient pour échapper à leur maître, d’Espagnols qui les aident en leur fournissant des denrées alimentaires pour survivre, d’autres Noirs qui essaient d’occuper des postes assez haut placés réservés aux Blancs, d’autres encore qui devenus affranchis sont faits soldats par les autorités pour assurer la protection des villes portuaires de l’empire, des relations entre Noirs et Indiens tour à tour conflictuelles et solidaires, des mulâtres de plus en plus nombreux. On notera que dans de rares cas, esclaves ou maîtres font preuve de solidarité, d’empathie et de compassion envers autrui. / In this work, we first dealt with the question of the different justifications of slavery from Antiquity to the Early Modern Age through Aristotelian theories of slavery by nature, biblical writings and the racial question as it could be perceived at the time. The processes that lead to the use of Blacks as labour and leading to large-scale slave trade and the different areas of work in which they are employed have been described. In this context, we analyse how the black man becomes "the other" from the moment of his capture and sale in Africa, then during his captivity and the crossing before his resale in America, how the personality as well as the natural right to freedom and to govern himself are taken away and denied. He is subjected to a general deprivation of his rights, whether natural or positive. Therefore, slavery begins with a process of several phases of brutal transitions until it arrives in Spanish Colonial America.The translations and transcriptions of authentic and unpublished documents gleaned from the various archives have enabled us to compile a body of laws on black slavery that is as exhaustive as possible. Its in-depth study allows us to identify trends and observe the complexity of the colonial world. Indeed, Spanish America of the 16th and 17th centuries was a violent world where the personality of the black man was seized almost exclusively through brutality, including the carrying of weapons, drunkenness, robberies, street gatherings during the day or at night and the fleeing that led him to create palenques permanently installed in the mountains, which caused growing concern among the Spanish, struggling to channel this black and mulatto caste ever more numerous, especially in urban centres. Thus, it is interesting to show the relationships between the different groups involved. Social relations, particularly between Indians and Blacks, were unexpectedly harsh, even if sometimes there were surges of solidarity against the common enemy. Thanks to the role of intermediaries between their master and the Indians, Blacks, in a new sense of numerical superiority, assimilated to the Spanish and committed numerous abuses and illtreatment of the natives by mimicry and compensatory phenomena. As we propose through the study of different legal documents, we cannot read this world in a Manichean way where everyone's place is not fixed but rather in perpetual movement is composed of idle Spaniards, Blacks who flee to escape their master, Spaniards who help them by providing them with food to survive, other blacks who tried to occupy fairly high-ranking positions reserved for whites, others who became liberated were made soldiers by the authorities to ensure the protection of the empire's port cities, relations between blacks and Indians, alternating between conflict and solidarity, and an ever-increasing number of mulattoes. It should be noted that in rare cases, slaves or masters show solidarity, empathy and compassion towards others.

This ethnohistorical study returns to a historical site of Black education, The Mississippi Freedom Schools (MFS) of 1964, to excavate conceptions of teacher education and Black education held by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) a predominantly Black social movement organization. The MFS served as an alternative site of education for Black children across the state of Mississippi that, unlike public school, placed the lives of Black children and the movement for Black liberation at the center of learning. Through an analysis of digital archival documents, secondary sources, and interviews this dissertation is segmented into two sections of historical findings. Part I begins with a series of narratives recounting a racialized history of teacher education, the journey of Black education in America, and the origin of SNCC. The second section details the foundational values of teacher education, answers the question, “What counted as teacher education?”, and derives the essential components of Black education all held by SNCC. By illuminating these conceptions this study aims to inform and transform the trajectory of not only how teachers are prepared to teach Black children, but also inform the broader field of education as it relates to education policy, curriculum, and teacher education program design. This study found that the foundational values of teaching and teacher education held by SNCC required teachers to interrogate and confront their deepest perceptions of Black folk, demands that teachers release ego and hero archetypes, and that teacher education actively disrupt traditional teacher-student binaries. Additionally, this study found that SNCC believed that a shattering of perceived realities and ideological foundations, a theoretical understanding of the Black American experience, and a knowledge of both the historical and current context of Mississippi counted as teacher education. Lastly, this dissertation found, according to SNCC, Black education served as a confirmation of youth’s lived experiences in an inequitable society, to demystify the functions of society that leads to oppression, aimed to dispel anti-Black myths and supplement the erasure of Blackness in school curriculum, and worked to cultivate an activist mindset and skillset.

Understanding “all policy is health policy,” this dissertation explores Black people’s healing and wellbeing with an abolition mindset. Through the lens of arts and culture in public health, the title denotes a pursuit of “healthful narratives” with ethical storytelling, creating, and performing that is conducive to good health. It manifests as public health dreaming in the midst of COVID-19 and state-sanctioned violence resulting from colonialism and racial capitalism—which contribute to racial hierarchies and millions of cross-generational deaths. This mixed-methods study contemplates the future of health promotion with concern for honoring Black creativity’s role in population health, and reckons with racial capitalism as foundational to health inequities and preventable, premature death. The study asks 1) What socio-cultural pathways do or can exist for theatrical and performance productions for health promotion? 2) In the face of racial, gendered capitalism, how does creativity manifest for Black women and/or gender-expansive people when creating or performing art and cultural work related to health promotion goals? Merging arts and culture into traditional public health infrastructure further exacerbates anti-Black harm, because it risks history repeating itself as our contemporary reality. As practice-based evidence, my Black Feminist Performance Auto/ethnography is research-engaged theatre, accompanied by learnings from research partners practicing contemplative arts-based research methodology. The findings are GriefLove, co-conceived with Des Bennett (director and dramaturg), and a narrative analysis of collage-based health mosaics and definitions of healthful narratives as forecasts of community-driven public health dreaming. The final chapter presents three socio-cultural pathways: “Black Embodiment,” “The Aesthetics of Health,” and “Futurity.” In the spirit of healthful narratives, it closes with a letter to Black Public Health Creatives and Cultural Workers in service of cultural and health equity—markers of “Good Health.”

Mass incarceration is a public health issue that impacts millions of Americans. Draconian drug laws, over-policing, and unfair sentencing policies rooted in racism have led to the incarceration of millions of Black and Latinx people in the past four decades. Mass incarceration not only has collateral consequences for the health of the incarcerated, but also fortheir partners and children across multiple dimensions. This cross-sectional study recruited participants using social media, email, and text messages. Those who identified as Black or Latinx, age 20 or older, and who had a partner who was incarcerated for at least three months were eligible for study participation. The study was novel in asking for ratings of physical and mental/emotional health for four time periods: before their partner’s incarceration, after their partner’s incarceration, the year after their partner’s release, and “now”/currently. Results showed significant declines in both physical and mental/emotional health (e.g., a decline in ratings for during their partner’s incarceration from the pre-incarceration level), as well as improvements (e.g., improvement for the period “now”/currently from the during incarceration level). Also, when rating their children for the same four time periods for physical health, mental/emotional health, behavioral conduct, and school performance, a similar pattern of both declines and improvements was found. Findings argued for the importance of a methodology using multiple time periods for obtaining ratings, and for a resilience framework to accommodate interpretation of improvements. Further, having a greater number of children, being currently employed, having a lower income, and a lower rating of mental health during their partner’s incarceration were four significant predictors found in the regression models for both study outcome variables: i.e., (1) a higher negative impact from a partner’s incarceration on multiple dimensions; and (2) more harmful mental health consequences for partners of the incarcerated. Findings provided evidence for an especially underserved at-risk subset within the population of diverse male and female partners of the incarcerated: i.e., Black and Latinx women with a high number of children who are employed yet earning low wages—while suffering from severe mental health symptoms. Implications of the findings and recommendations are discussed.

Professional decision-making concerning the nature and quantity of schoolchildren's educational, counseling, and remedial experiences is critical to children's success. How are aspects of students' race and socioeconomic status associated with teachers' and counselors' recommendations regarding the supportive and remedial services provided to them? This study examined how racial/ethnic identity and social class may influence the early treatment decisions that teachers and counselors make about programs and services that could benefit their students. The study analyzed archival data collected from teachers and counselors via a classroom vignette study in which participants suggested appropriate programming and services for a hypothetical child. The scenario and the presenting issues were the same across all vignettes, while the hypothetical child's race/ethnicity and socioeconomic background varied. Overall, the results suggested that many teachers and counselors can make unbiased decisions about service recommendations for students. However, responses to the Asian American vignette frequently seemed to be affected by the model minority stereotype; in addition, trends that suggested biased views towards Latinx and low SES students were found, along with the possible existence of a positive feedback bias toward Black students. Suggested future research directions included the creation of a scale for the measurement of attitudinal dispositional ratings with an extension to clinical settings.

In May of 2021, in a move unprecedented in European history, the governments of Germany and Namibia announced the completion of their negotiations for funding to redress what they together have termed the "wounds" of the colonial past. The bilateral agreement had long been declared void by Namibians of diverse backgrounds, however, who protested that the way they have been treated pales in comparison to the kind of treatment that Jewish people of various communities have received from Germany since 1945. My ethnographic research followed the diversity of discourse about German colonialism in two years leading up to this agreement in multiple locations; from hearings concerning legal demands for the return of Herero and Nama indigenous land, bones, and cattle in New York City, to political struggles around race and racism in Berlin, to the intransigent settler work of German Lutheran landowners in Namibia. I explore this ethnographic and historical material in a thesis that has three distinct sections. In the first part, I look at the place of the idea of Germany in these ongoing struggles by turning to the German Namibian community and the networks that they operate in and through. I ask after the borders of Germany as an idea, as a territory, and as a political theology – and I look to what "German Namibia" can tell us about contemporary German politics more broadly – most specifically as a site to undertake a potential genealogy of German Protestant Liberalism and its various phantasms. In the second part, I look to the history of Holocaust reparations and its relationship to the Herero and Nama case in the New York courtroom to understand how historically specific iterations of the figure of the suffering Jew have come to contour various grammars in which repair for anti-Black violence and native dispossession are fought for and responded to, especially when figured through the juridical language of reparations. In the third part, I turn towards the contemporary German politics of acknowledgment, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the process of coming to terms with the past. Rather than asking here after the lack of attention to colonial history on the part of the German state, I ask after how the state has actively tried to oppose colonial racism by integrating the history of colonialism into its memory politics. I look to the multiple paradoxes of this attempt that I argue ultimately leads to a reinscription of German white supremacy upon racialized bodies. Overall, my research turns to the past and present of German settler colonialism to explore the politics of reparation on an international scale alongside the relationship between race, religion, and repair in a fractured Europe.

Studying resident repurposing permits an understanding of urban planning that foregrounds the power of residents to shape the production of space. This dissertation is an extended case study of resident-initiated planning alternatives in the former ‘Bantustan’ capital city of Mmabatho (present-day Mahikeng), today a South African secondary city. Apartheid officials planned Mahikeng through racial-modernist principles of ‘separate development’ as a receiving site of forced relocation and racialized dispossession of Black South Africans. Historical and archival research, semi-structured interviews, and personal communications with planners, public officials, activists, and residents uncover the historical roots of repurposing in apartheid-era contestation to planning marked by elite profit and graft. Through in situ analyses of 80+ built sites, 60+ of which have been repurposed, I propose specific types of repurposing in Mahikeng: official and unofficial land-use changes; symbolic and aesthetic innovations; ephemeral or pop-up activations; and institutional reformulations of former ‘Bantustan’ buildings. Case studies of select built sites—and case studies of select local neighborhoods and their experiences of political-geographic change—enable me to propose that repurposing has proceeded in a dynamic cycle that includes contestation, destruction, and (re)invention. Various “key ingredients” enable repurposings to be successful, including actors, tactics, and institutional arrangements. To explain why residents repurpose, I consider actors’ motivations and find that repurposing is driven by wide-ranging and varied autonomous interests, including economic survival, human dignity, and meaning-making. The consequences of repurposing are profound: it helps meet residents’ basic needs and gestures toward an alternative planning imaginary in the city, one marked by an incremental vernacular approach to planning. This study raises critical questions broadly relevant to planning and urban policy, including: how do afterlives of racial domination affect the production of space, viewed through residents’ repurposing? How do repurposing and vernacular planning unfold in different local geographic and sociopolitical contexts? How should urban policy account for residents’ self-initiated city-making? And what roles should self-initiated city-makers (repurposers) play in shaping planning and urban policy? While the conceptual label of repurposing may echo globally, distinctive to Mahikeng is how contemporary repurposing is historically and institutionally grounded in solidarity: contestation to apartheid planning.

O objetivo desta dissertação é estudar o direito fundamental à saúde da mulher negra no município de São Paulo. O direito à saúde é um direito humano fundamental, mas no exercício desse direito as mulheres negras sofrem dois tipos de discriminação: a racial e a de gênero. O primeiro capítulo é uma reflexão sobre os direitos humanos e os direitos fundamentais, histórico, natureza e características. A pesquisa está relacionada ao estudo dos Direitos Humanos, tendo como ponto de partida a sua construção histórica. A Constituição Brasileira de 1988 representou a positivação de direitos fundamentais e a proteção do valor fonte dignidade humana. O legislador constituinte positivou expressamente a igualdade racial, os direitos fundamentais das mulheres e o direito fundamental à saúde. Já o segundo capítulo ressalta a importância da constitucionalização do direito à saúde, a doutrina do direito sanitário e o estudo das políticas públicas. Relativamente à perspectiva dos Direitos Humanos, apontamos a imbricação entre o feminismo dos anos 1970-1980 e o movimento negro organizado na luta pela igualdade de gênero e igualdade racial. O capítulo terceiro versa sobre a política pública de direito à saúde da mulher negra nos planos nacional, estadual e municipal. E por fim, apresentamos a nossa proposta de Educação em Direitos Humanos. / The objective of this dissertation is to study the fundamental right to health of black woman in São Paulo. The right to health is a fundamental human right but, in exercising that right, black women suffer two types of discrimination: of race and gender. The first chapter is a reflection on the human and fundamental rights, history, nature and characteristics. The research is related to the study of human rights, using their historical construction as the starting point. The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 represented the protective legalization of fundamental rights and its cornerstone, which is the human dignity. The statute expressly constituted racial equality, fundamental rights of women and the fundamental right to health. The second chapter highlights the importance of making constitutional the right to health, the sanitary law doctrine and the study of public policy. For the perspective of Human Rights, we point out the overlap between the years 1970-1980 feminism and organized black movement in the struggle for gender and racial equality. The third and the fourth chapters deals with the public policy of the right to health of black woman at the under national, state and municipal views. Finally, we present our proposal for education in Human Rights.

[pt] O objetivo desta tese é o estudo da obra do desenhista Seth (1891-1949), um dos mais importantes caricaturistas brasileiros da primeira metade do século XX, percebendo sobretudo a singularidade de sua contribuição, no tocante a criação de personagens negros, e procurando um amplo levantamento documental, biográfico e artístico de sua carreira, buscando analisar sua trajetória no meio artístico do Rio de Janeiro entre as décadas de 1910 e 1940, seu percurso intelectual. A presente pesquisa trabalha com um número expressivo de desenhos produzidos durante esse longo período, no qual se destacam obras da caricatura de costumes como Quando a morena passa, O democrático bonde, Dois desejos, da série Flagrantes Cariocas, entre outras. O trabalho objetiva ainda o estudo das inovações que Seth trouxe para a publicidade com os cartazes da série Casa Mathias. E procura entender como Seth encontrou na participação na política de propaganda cívica do regime Vargas um caminho para a expressão de suas crenças nacionalistas, observando sua relação com os valores do Estado Novo. / [en] This proposition try to bring lights about Seth (1891- 1949) - one of the most importants brazilians caricaturists in the first half of the XX century, talking about the singularity of his contribution, at the concern of his black people characters creations and the searching to enlarge the documental, biographic and artistic aspects of his career, analyzing his trajectory in the middle of the artistic environment in Rio de Janeiro, between 1910 and 1940 decades, his intellectual journey. The present research works with au expressive numbers of drawings, produced along this period, showing works of the customs drawings likes the ones The Brunette´s Walks; The Democratic Streetcar; Two Desires, all frow the Cariocas Flagrants series, between others. This researchs will focus either the study of publicity innovations introduced by Seth for Casa Mathias Magazines calendars and posters. The proposition seeks to understand how the artist founded at the civic propaganda in the Vargas govern times, a way to express his nacionalistics believes, in the craddle of the Estado Novo values.