Title: The (De)Formation of African American Subjectivity in Toni Morrison¡¦s The Bluest Eye Institute of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Sun Yat-sen University Date: June 17, 2004 By: Kai-chung Cheng Advisor: Professor Shu-li Chang Abstract: This thesis aims to examine Toni Morrison¡¦s The Bluest Eye with Michel Foucault¡¦s concept of discipline, the notion of ownership, and the impotence of manhood to explore how Morrison textualizes the (de)formation of African American subjectivity. To begin with, I will justify the feasibility of setting up such a dialogue between Toni Morrison and Michel Foucault. Both the racial oppression Morrison textualizes and the disciplinary process Foucault contextualizes operate in such a subtle way that the subject is not aware of it and thus does not fight back. Therefore, Morrison and Foucault draw attention to how people are implicitly oppressed and disciplined in the construction of their docile subjectivity. In addition, Morrison emphasizes how she worries about the effect of ownership on the construction of African American subjectivity by pervading The Bluest Eye with African Americans¡¦ desire to own properties. Their craze to own properties indicates their desire to acquire something that they believe can be found in ownership. Morrison points out implicitly that what African Americans truly desire in their desperate pursuit of ownership is their own self. However, in Morrison¡¦s textualization, such a strategy employed by African Americans to own their self almost always ends up in failure. Based on such a failure, Morrison posits the success of owning a self, specifically an African American female self, requires one to continue in the struggles to achieve one¡¦s self identity and to build up a healthy and intimate relationship with one¡¦s community. Moreover, Morrison¡¦s portrayal of the dehumanization of African American men aims not to place blame on how brutal they are, but to arouse attention as well as pity to their suffering. It is impossible to construct a wholesome African American subjectivity without paying attention to the frustration African American males confront, for, feeling impotent in achieving their manhood, they turn to the oppression of African American females. Though Morrison projects African American females and males in different ways, she devotes her writing to both of them. To sum up the structure of my thesis: In Introduction, I will justify the feasibility of examining Morrison¡¦s The Bluest Eye with Foucault¡¦s discipline; in Chapter One, I will present how Foucault¡¦s concepts of gaze, norm, and Panopticism explain the reason why African Americans do not fight against the white value that oppresses them but adopt and practice it in their daily lives; in Chapter Two, I will focus on how the notion of ownership impinges upon their subjectivity and what Morrison puts forth to about how African Americans may begin to own their self; in Chapter Three, I will elaborate the significance of the process in which African American males are made impotent and dehumanized; in Conclusion, I will summarize the main arguments in previous chapters to conclude this thesis.

This study qualitatively examines the synergetic relationship between marketing communication, identity formation, and consumer behavior within the context of black and white males of the Millennial Generation. The sample consisted of 20 males between the ages of 18-29; ten self-identified as black and 10 self-identified as white. This project expands the knowledge base of consumption/identity research by incorporating intersectionality into the present body of consumer behavior work. A consumer’s identity project is far more complex than what is represented by current consumer behavior scholarship. Consumers must navigate multiple sites of identification that constantly shift in importance and involvement. To more closely reflect consumers in the flesh, this study incorporated multiple sites of identity projects into the analysis. By taking a more “true-to-life” approach to consumption/identity research, this project unearths new knowledge that is proximate to the lived experience of consumers. Consumer culture theory (CCT), a division of consumer research that moves the discussion of consumption behavior deep into the realm of cultural impact was used as the conceptual focus of this project. Autodriving was utilized to collect data. This form of photo elicitation involves the use of informants taking photos of a particular phenomenon and then “driving” the interview by discussing the photos they have taken. In the context of this study, informants were furnished a disposal camera and asked to photographically document representations of the following: achievement & success, morality, humanitarianism, nationalism, and freedom. Informants were strongly encouraged to also visually document anything that did not fit into the abovementioned categories but represented something they found particularly interesting or offensive. To examine the impact of marketing communication on the informants’ identity projects, print advertisements featuring different configurations of masculinity and manhood were explored. Three key themes emerged from the data. All informants used the marketplace to express values. The concept of identity elasticity was developed to explain the significant difference in identity potentiality between white and black informants. Many white and black informants shared the perception that they live in a post-racial society. However, the experience of a post-racial society was highly divergent based on racial formation. / text

This novel study explores the catalytic experiences that demarcate the achievement of manhood and the means by which the participants knew this transition had occurred. Its significance is in its unique findings and contribution to a largely unexplored topic in the research literature. Qualitative methodologies, including narrative interviewing and thematic analysis, were used. Ten individuals were interviewed and asked to tell the story of when they became men and how they knew. Thematic findings include experiences that led to gaining attributes associated with self-reliance and changes related to fathers or fatherhood. The participants uniformly reported that the significance was known by virtue of experiencing a distinct ‘felt sense.’ Social validation was also noted as a key feature. Further research is recommended including the exploration of this same issue with specific populations and groups, with the larger goal of enhancing the current understanding of these issues by encouraging further dialog in effort to explore the meanings associated with manhood in the contemporary context. / Graduate / 0519 / 0621 / coryklath@gmail.com

This novel study explores the catalytic experiences that demarcate the achievement of manhood and the means by which the participants knew this transition had occurred. Its significance is in its unique findings and contribution to a largely unexplored topic in the research literature. Qualitative methodologies, including narrative interviewing and thematic analysis, were used. Ten individuals were interviewed and asked to tell the story of when they became men and how they knew. Thematic findings include experiences that led to gaining attributes associated with self-reliance and changes related to fathers or fatherhood. The participants uniformly reported that the significance was known by virtue of experiencing a distinct ‘felt sense.’ Social validation was also noted as a key feature. Further research is recommended including the exploration of this same issue with specific populations and groups, with the larger goal of enhancing the current understanding of these issues by encouraging further dialog in effort to explore the meanings associated with manhood in the contemporary context. / Graduate / 2015-05-05 / 0519 / 0621 / coryklath@gmail.com

This dissertation examines how manhood is conceptualized by Black National Football League (NFL) prospects and explores how their characterizations of manhood are associated with their desire to become NFL players. This mixed-method study uses data collected by interviewing and surveying fifteen Black NFL draft prospects who were or would be eligible for the NFL draft between 2005-2016. The data are supplemented with existing literature and analyzed using the "Utamaduni Bwana" table of African cultural manhood in order to (1) culturally locate participants' conceptions of manhood, (2) identify the African elements within their conceptions of manhood, and (3) highlight the agency within their responses. In essence, this dissertation explores the significance of the NFL draft and the influence of colonization on Black NFL prospects' conceptions of manhood. This study found that Black NFL prospects' desire to reach the NFL is heavily associated with their attempt to reach manhood. The characteristics most commonly found in the participants' conceptions of manhood are strength, independence, and financial success; and their perceptions of NFL players contain hyper-expressions of these same characteristics. In addition, Black NFL prospects' conceptualization of manhood contain both African cultural elements and, as a result of colonization, hegemonic Western cultural elements. This dissertation makes an important contribution to sporting and gender literature by using an Afrocentric methodology to push beyond the normative investigation of Black-male athletes' identity and sporting goals. This study offers new and culturally appropriate questions regarding race, gender, and sports. / African American Studies

Ernest Gaines collection of five short stories Bloodline, (1968) depicts the effects of racism and its denigrating effects on the lives of the black men. Gaines use of animal imagery furthers the effects of racism on the psychology of the blacks. The resolution comes around in the form of a mentor who helps the protagonists to break through the debilitating mind-set and work towards a new self-identity no longer defined by the white man. Gaines articulates the effects of lack of maturity, responsibility and understanding on the lives of the protagonists, their families and the community as a whole. Gaines brings out the new avatar of the black man who in his self-actualized journey arrives at an understanding of nurturing, caring and contributing to the community. It marks both the culmination and a beginning of true manhood in the lives of his central characters.

The aim of this research is to consider family as a kin network of exchange and to show that manhood and fatherhood is a cultural value transacted within this network. It attempts to also show that such value is variably negotiated as identity is performed in relation to ideological constructs of space. To do this, the physical and ideological space to which kin belong is explored as a cultural borderland, suggesting that men/fathers are able to exceed bounded constructs of identity while also being subject to them. In particular, I try to illuminate some of the dynamics that impact on men’s/fathers’ negotiation of discursive codes of intra-cultural sameness and difference to be valued not only as men/fathers, but as good at being men/fathers. Within this context, some of the symbols of identity that enable a man/father to be good at being a man/father are considered. The ethnography highlights the ways in which men/fathers are able to access and mediate symbolic resources, showing how these processes impact on their positioning on a continuum of self and worth. In this regard, performances of providing in relation to performances of the social and genetic imbrications of kinship constitute a key focus.

Thesis advisor: James M. O'Toole / This dissertation investigates the Holy Name Society, a Catholic men's confraternity that thrived in early-to-mid twentieth-century America, aimed at addressing perceived problems of modernity by curbing blasphemous speech and bringing men back to the regular attendance to the sacraments of the faith. A dual focus on the local Holy Name movement in Boston and the national campaign uncovers the linkages within the organization as its numbers and purposes expanded. Blending the perspective of lived religion with the methods of social and cultural history, the study explores social relationships of Holy Name men pertaining to race, gender, family, and children, and it shows that the institution was the main lens through which its members translated their faith into their daily lives. Holy Name men, for example, entered into the era of Catholic Action long before historians understand that movement to have begun. The institution served as the Catholic counterpart to the predominantly Protestant push for muscular Christianity, combining corporate faith practice with publicly oriented events such as massive rallies and parades. As such, the society became a mouthpiece of the laity, lashing out against anti-Catholic bigotry, defining American Catholic patriotism anew, and offering a particularly strong anticommunist stance. The study uncovers new dimensions in the relationships between the clergy and the laity, it shows that liberal concepts of racial equality came early and met with mixed success in the organization, and it reveals that Catholic laymen at midcentury bore a tremendous responsibility as defenders of their nation, church, wives, and children. The domestic role of Holy Name men, moreover, was much more engaged and leadership-oriented than traditional "separate spheres" assumptions about gender and family relations might suggest. The overarching result is that the study conclusively shows that many of the dramatic changes commonly attributed to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council were in fact underway long before the 1960s. The distinctive era of Holy Name practice described here, however, had begun to decline by the late 1940s, a process accelerated the following decade by the relative decline of Catholic devotional life and larger social forces such as suburbanization. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

This research project examines multiple constructions of masculinity during the reign of William III (1689-1702), a period often overlooked by historians of masculinity. Historical interpretations of masculinity in the early modern period have focused heavily on patriarchal models of masculinity and the accompanying gendered relationships and expectations associated with the household. Recently, historians have turned their attention to cultures of politeness and civility in the public sphere. Yet masculinity in this period was more diverse than these prominent models allow because it could be constructed through a number of different processes. Using normative literature and experiential records, this project seeks to add to the scholarship on nonpatriarchal constructions, understandings, and norms of masculinity. Four non-domestic settings were particularly prominent and recurrent throughout the autobiographical sources and normative literature of the period: the military, government and public service, commerce, and religion. The norms associated with each setting were complex. Moreover, these norms sometimes varied between settings in ways that created tension. Negotiating masculinity in accordance with the normative expectations of various settings could be taxing. Each of these four settings constitutes a chapter in this dissertation, along with a final chapter that shifts the focus beyond the British Isles to how British colonists, travellers, and traders experienced the foreign hardships, climates, and peoples of the geographical periphery, which often necessitated further alternative constructions of masculinity. Grounded upon men's experience recorded in their own words in diaries, journals, and memoirs, this project highlights the numerous ways of establishing manhood and demonstrates the variability of masculinity as an identity that is both subjective and socially contingent. Examining settings of masculinity outside of the household and beyond male female relations at the turn of the eighteenth century confirms that masculinity is multiple, nuanced, complicated, and (at times) anxious.

p. 1-185 / Submitted by Santiago Fabio (fabio.ssantiago@hotmail.com) on 2013-04-29T19:34:14Z No. of bitstreams: 1 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.pdf: 1154392 bytes, checksum: 4190d77086d54d9f4f1402b82f7bc7a1 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Creuza Silva(mariakreuza@yahoo.com.br) on 2013-05-04T17:33:16Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.pdf: 1154392 bytes, checksum: 4190d77086d54d9f4f1402b82f7bc7a1 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-04T17:33:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.pdf: 1154392 bytes, checksum: 4190d77086d54d9f4f1402b82f7bc7a1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / A saúde na contemporaneidade vem sendo considerada um valor distintivo a ser conquistado, na qual o discurso sobre “saudável” incorpora significados como juventude, força e beleza. A crescente valorização da aparência física tem levado um número cada vez maior de pessoas a frequentar academias de musculação, bem como a consumir produtos farmacêuticos e nutricionais, em vista do aprimoramento das dimensões corpóreas. Este trabalho tem por objetivo descrever os cuidados com o corpo e analisar as concepções de saúde de homens das classes populares freqüentadores de academia na cidade de Salvador. Foi realizado um estudo etnográfico, com vistas a compreender como a construção do corpo musculoso se associa a masculinidade e a saúde nos praticantes de musculação de academias de bairros populares. Utilizou-se predominantemente a metodologia etnográfica proposta por Loic Wacquant (2002) da “Participação Observante”, no intuito de colher impressões, descrições e cenas que minuciosamente orientam o entendimento das práticas de musculação. Além disso, foram realizadas entrevistas semi-estruturadas com freqüentadores de academias. A musculação se constitui como um esporte em que dar o máximo de si está diretamente ligado ao limite máximo de transformação do próprio corpo. O corpo funciona como um elemento que encarna uma idéia de controle físico e mental, fatores relacionados diretamente como elementos essenciais a saúde. Se por um lado os adeptos ostentam a necessidade de se ter uma vida regrada evitando os excessos da vida mundana, por outro lado utilizam para a manutenção e fabricação do corpo a prática excessiva dos exercícios físicos e o uso elevado de substâncias anabólicas. Esses homens que vêem na disciplina do esporte uma forma de negação de outras masculinidades construídas pelo tráfico de drogas e violência constroem novas hierarquias de masculinidades, na qual a figura do “homem de bem” se instaura como seu elemento estruturante. Observa-se que a idéia de saúde, no contexto estudado, também está diretamente ligada ao que se permeia no imaginário masculino: “saúde, sinônimo de força e externalização do bem-estar físico”, uma vez que esses homens vêem a representação física dos seus corpos como um marcador de saúde, mesmo que na construção do corpo “sarado” eles driblem a lógica do corpo tido como “saudável”. Assim, pode-se concluir que as formas de lidar com o corpo e com a identidade de gênero pode apreender uma riqueza de pormenores que em menor ou maior grau atinge os padrões de saúde e doença. / Salvador