The purpose of the current study was to explore potential differences in pre- and post-concussion performance on a computerized neurocognitive concussion test between African American and White high-school and collegiate student-athletes. A prospective case-control design was used to compare baseline and 2- and 7-day post-concussion computerized neurocognitive performance and symptoms between 48 White and 48 African American athletes matched for age, gender, and concussion history. The Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment Cognitive Test (ImPACT) version 2.0 (NeuroHealth System, LLC, Pittsburgh, PA, USA) computer software program was used to assess neurocognitive function (i.e., verbal and visual memory, motor processing speed, and reaction time) and concussion symptoms. Regardless of race/ethnicity, there were significant decrements in computerized neurocognitive performance and increased symptoms following a concussion for the entire sample. African Americans and Whites did not differ significantly on baseline or post-concussion verbal memory, visual memory, reaction time, and total reported symptoms. However, African American participants were 2.4× more likely to have at least one clinically significant cognitive decline on ImPACT at 7 days post-concussion and scored lower at 7 days post-concussion compared with baseline on processing speed than White participants. The authors concluded that the baseline ImPACT test was culturally equivalent and construct valid for use with these two racial/ethnic groups. However, in contrast, the findings support deleterious performance for the African American athletes compared with the White athletes on the ImPACT post-concussion evaluation that is of critical clinical relevance and warrants further research.

ABSTRACT Charles W. Chesnutt captures the essence of the Post Civil War period and gives examples of the assimilation process for African Americans into dominant white culture. In doing so, he shows the resistance of the dominant culture as well as the resilience of the African American culture. It is his belief that through literature he could encourage moral reform and eliminate racial discrimination. As an African American author who could pass for white, he is able to share his own experiences and to develop black characters who are ambitious and intelligent. As a result, he leaves behind a legacy of great works that are both informative and entertaining.

Since the 1992 republication of On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot, most academic work on Apess has focused on his Methodism, his Native American identity, or the intersection between these two parts of his life and work. Dr. Tim Fulford is the only scholar to have written about Apess and Romanticism. In his book Romantic Indians: Native Americans, British Literature, and Transatlantic Culture, 1756-1830, Fulford illustrates the elegiac modes often present in the work of Apess. This thesis will examine William Apess’ Son of the Forest as an expression of early nineteenth century American Romanticism from a post-colonial standpoint. Apess uses Romantic rhetoric to define Native American identity and through that identity, argue for Native American political agency.

Slavery is something that cannot be taken lightly. Even Butler says no matter how harsh the slavery in her novel is, it does not compare to how gruesome actual slavery was: “As a matter of fact, one of the things I realized when I was reading the slave narrative…was that I was not going to be able to come anywhere near presenting slavery as it was. I was going to have to do a some-what cleaned-up version of slavery, or no one would be willing to read it” (qtd. in Kenan 497). Octavia Butler knew that if she presented slavery directly and in a way that called people, most likely white males, that there would not be an audience for the novel. Instead she had to present slavery as something society shaped, rather than a specific group of individuals. An analysis of Octavia Butler’s Kindred reveals that societal expectations alter the dynamics of such interracial relationships as those between Dana and Kevin, Dana and Rufus, and Rufus and Alice, determining their success or failure without regard to the foundations upon which these relationships were initially built.

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Roberto and his family moved to the United States from his native El Salvador after his older brother drowned on a desolate beach. As an adult, he returns to that same beach to reconcile with what his brother’s death has meant to his life and what he missed out on by being raised as an American. On that beach, he encounters Laurencio, an old fisherman who seems to empathize with Roberto and shares with him the legend of Hugo el Maximo, also a fisherman who was dragged away by the ocean but resurfaces and endures a difficult journey as he returns to his village. Entranced by the legend, Roberto listens to Laurencio, and his own difficulties and unresolved issues about origin, immigration, and identity surface as Hugo’s story unfurls.

Eudora Welty's brief photographic career offers valuable insight into the development of her literary voice. She discovers many of the distinguishing characters of her fiction during the 1930s while traveling through Mississippi writing articles for the Works Progress Administration and taking pictures of the people and places she encountered. Analyzing the connections between her first collection of photographs, One Time, One Place: Mississippi during the Depression: A Snapshot Album, and her first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, and Other Stories, reveals the writer's sympathetic attitude towards her characters, the prominence of place in her fiction, and her use of time in the telling of a story.

This thesis explores the women editors of Indigenous magazines published in the beginning of the twentieth century. This thesis will focus on how Indigenous writers influenced modernism, and how these writings offer ways to explore modernism in different contexts. Specifically looking at the Aboriginal Edition of Poetry magazine (1917), Twin Territories (1899), and Tributes to a Vanishing Race (1916) and the women who were involved in the editing and publication of these texts reveal how modernism was influenced by Indigenous writings. By looking at a comparison between what modernism considered to be Indigenous at the time in Poetry which is edited by and includes poems written by Harriet Monroe, Alice Corbin Henderson, Mary Austin, and Constance Lindsay Skinner, I look at the background and intentions of these non-indigenous women and their deep fascinations with sharing what they considered to be Indigenous poetry with the world in Poetry. Chapter One on Poetry: Aboriginal Edition and investigates some of the problematic issues that arose from these seemingly well- intentioned women, who wanted to share their love of Indigenous writings with a larger audience, but just appropriated and published stereotyped versions of poems they themselves wrote which were "influenced" by Indigenous writings. Chapter Two compares Poetry with books published by Indigenous women with poems written by Indigenous authors as provided by Twin Territories, edited by Ora Eddleman Reed and Tributes to a Vanishing Race, a book of Indigenous poems edited by Irene Campbell Beaulieu and Kathleen Woodward. This highlights the accomplishments of women such as Ora Eddleman Reed, Irene Campbell Beaulieu, and Kathleen Woodward, who published poems and other Indigenous writings written by Indigenous authors for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations across the nation. Twin Territories and Tributes to a Vanishing Race provide examples of Indigenous modernism, as modernism was just beginning to form.