Black women remain at a higher risk for HIV infection than women of any other ethnic group. Of all new infections reported among U.S. women in 2010, 64% occurred in African Americans compared to 18% Whites and 15% Hispanic/Latina women (CDC 2013a; CDC 2014b). While the literature on HIV risk among African American women is extensive, it mostly focuses on low income, low education subgroups of women or those involved in high risk behaviors such as drug use. Very little has been done to understand the risk for HIV among college educated, middle class women who do not fit into traditional "risk categories." Based on extensive fieldwork in Atlanta, GA, this study illustrates how middle class African American women's attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and behaviors related to HIV risk are influenced by their social and cultural norms. This research employed a womanist framework to examine the intersection of race, gender, and class and the way these factors interact to shape HIV risk in middle class African American women. Whereas some middle class African American women perceive their HIV risk as low based on social class, structural factors associated with experiences of being an African American woman in Atlanta, GA (e.g., gender imbalance, geographic location, sexual networks) weaken the protective influence of class and put them at risk for HIV. Thus, findings from this study will help inform prevention strategies to focus on African American women who fall outside of "traditional risk groups."

No description available.

The subject of my thesis project is black nonfiction, namely the essay, memoir, and autobiography, written by black authors about and during the Post-Civil Rights Era. The central goals of this work are to briefly investigate the role of genre analysis within the various subsets of nonfiction and also to exemplify the ways that black writers have taken key genre models and evolved them. Secondly, I aim to understand the historical, political, and cultural contributions of the Post-Civil Rights Era, which I mark as hitting its stride in 1968. It is not my desire to create a definitive historical framework for the Post-Civil Rights Era, but instead to understand it as a period of transition, revolt, and transformation which asked many important questions that have remained unanswered. I apply multiple theoretical frameworks to my research — like queer theory, Afro-pessimism, fugitivity, and more — to offer insights into the nonfiction works of writers such as James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, Larry Neale, and Toni Cade Bambara. It is my hope to continue the work of such scholars as Hortense Spillers, Angela Ards, and Margo V. Perkins, by illustrating not only how these authors offered literary and aesthetic innovations, but also, through the archiving of their life experiences in print, create theories and practices for survival, forged in the past, which impact our current moment, and inspire us as scholars and activists to do the same.

No description available.