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Title: " ... To do credit to my nation, wherever I go" : West Indian and Cape Verdean immigrants in Southeastern New England, 1890-1940
Creator: Edwards, Janelle Marlena
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This work is a community study that centers the experiences of black immigrants as an overlapping diaspora in multi-ethnic and transnational African-American history. It argues that, through the operationalization of their familial networks, ethnic organizations, and neighborhood enclaves, black immigrants in New England depart from traditional histories of assimilation and acculturation. Though much scholarship has been dedicated to the politically charged organizations and black immigrant...
Show moreThis work is a community study that centers the experiences of black immigrants as an overlapping diaspora in multi-ethnic and transnational African-American history. It argues that, through the operationalization of their familial networks, ethnic organizations, and neighborhood enclaves, black immigrants in New England depart from traditional histories of assimilation and acculturation. Though much scholarship has been dedicated to the politically charged organizations and black immigrant participation in New York, this microhistory of Southeastern New England's port cities -- Providence and New Bedford--demonstrates the commonplace, quotidian lives of West Indians and Cape Verdeans as neighbors, friends, and relatives who experienced and adapted to their diaspora condition differently. While West Indians altered their community landscape and eventually assimilated into the African-American community, Cape Verdeans retained a Cape Verdean ethnic identity, bolstered by their transnational shipping fleet and the constant flow of people, goods, and ideas from the homeland.
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Title: "'I'm gone be 'Black on both sides'" : examining the literacy practices and legacy learning within a sustaining urban debate community
Creator: Jones Stanbrough, Raven
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "This study explored the lived experiences of Black student-debaters and debate supporters in ACTION Debate (AD), an afterschool debate program dedicated to offering and providing debate opportunities and instruction to high school students in a major Midwestern city." -- Abstract.

Title: "'Invading vacationland for Christ' : the construction of evangelical identity through summer camps in the postwar era"
Creator: Koerselman, Rebecca A.
Date: 2013
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Evangelical summer camps blossomed in the post–World War II years, more than tripling their numbers from 1945 to 1960. But scholars have yet to explain the phenomenon at this critical juncture in American history. Summer camps provide a lens for how evangelicals saw themselves in an increasingly secular postwar world. Many believed the influence of evangelicals was on the decline, and scholars have indicated the overall waning of the influence of mainline Protestant denominations...
Show moreEvangelical summer camps blossomed in the post–World War II years, more than tripling their numbers from 1945 to 1960. But scholars have yet to explain the phenomenon at this critical juncture in American history. Summer camps provide a lens for how evangelicals saw themselves in an increasingly secular postwar world. Many believed the influence of evangelicals was on the decline, and scholars have indicated the overall waning of the influence of mainline Protestant denominations throughout the twentieth century. But an examination of summer camps reveals that evangelicals desired to engage in mainstream culture through reaching American postwar youth. They consciously worked to influence America's youth in unprecedented ways, appealing to them through the combination of faith and fun, working to attract the growing teenage subculture in order to create and sustain the next generation of evangelical leadership. Summer camps, an innovative approach to reaching America's youth, aided evangelicals as they sought to reassert both a Christian and American identity in the postwar milieu of anxiety and change. The establishment of evangelical summer camps in the 1940s and 1950s demonstrated a clear resurgence of evangelical power. This evangelical power, building on the organizational foundation of the 1940s and 1950s, continued its trajectory into the national spotlight and cultural significance in the late twentieth and early twenty first century. The examination of the diversity of evangelical summer camps through broader historical lenses provides a variety of different ways to unearth how evangelicals went from a sheltered group that supposedly disappeared in the 1920s to their visibility and influence of today. An exploration of the continuing influence of denominational institutions as well as the growing evidence of non–denominational camps revealed the extent to which postwar evangelicals struggled to neatly identify as liberal, modern, or more conservative. An investigation of the construction of gender–based identities explains how evangelicals sometimes fit with existing gender norms, but also the ways they pushed against traditional gender roles by encouraging girls to pursue evangelical careers. A consideration of the issues of race and environmentalism indicates the immense diversity within evangelicalism during the postwar era. Finally, the exploration of the voices of evangelical youth exposes a language of political activism. Evangelical youth believed they were the solution to the world’s problems and that missionizing, political involvement, establishing more Christian institutions, and pursuing world peace were what evangelicals should care about.
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Title: "A challenge and a promise" : the political activities of Detroit clubwomen in the 1920s
Creator: Morris-Crowther, Jayne
Date: 2001
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "A crowd of solitudes" : the social poetry of James Wright
Creator: Schulte, Raphael J.
Date: 1992
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "A dialogue with unreason" : the critical history of Edgar Allan Poe's The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1838-1993
Creator: Harvey, Ronald C. (Ronald Clark)
Date: 1995
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "A different kind of failure" : rupture, transfiguration and the future of indeterminacy in modern drama
Creator: Norman, Lance
Date: 2007
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "A dog has four legs but walks in one direction" : multiple religious belonging and organic Africa-inspired religious traditions in Oriente Cuba
Creator: Zaid, Shanti Ali
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "If religion is about social cohesion and the coordination of meaning, values, and motivations of a community or society, how do communities meaningfully navigate the religious domain in an environment of multiple religious possibilities? Within the range of socio-cultural responses to such conditions, this dissertation empirically explores 'multiple religious belonging,' a concept referring to individuals or groups whose religious identity, commitments, or activities may extend beyond a...
Show more"If religion is about social cohesion and the coordination of meaning, values, and motivations of a community or society, how do communities meaningfully navigate the religious domain in an environment of multiple religious possibilities? Within the range of socio-cultural responses to such conditions, this dissertation empirically explores 'multiple religious belonging,' a concept referring to individuals or groups whose religious identity, commitments, or activities may extend beyond a single coherent religious tradition. The project evaluates expressions of this phenomenon in the eastern Cuban city of Santiago de Cuba with focused attention on practitioners of Regla Ocha/Ifa, Palo Monte, Espiritismo Cruzado, and Muerteria, four organic religious traditions historically evolved from the efforts of African descendants on the island. With concern for identifying patterns, limits, and variety of expression of multiple religious belonging, I employed qualitative research methods to explore how distinctions and relationships between religious traditions are articulated, navigated, and practiced. These methods included directed formal and informal personal interviews and participant observations of ritual spaces, events, and community gatherings in the four traditions. I demonstrate that religious practitioners in Santiago manage diverse religious options through multiple religious belonging and that practitioners have strategies for expressing their multiple religious belonging. The diverse expressions involve characteristics of centered and un-centered models of multiple religious belonging, as well as attributes of shared reality and complementarity between religious traditions. The research contributes to a more critical understanding of the complexities of eastern Cuban religious expressions and religious traditions of the African Diaspora. Moreover, the project aims to enhance the conceptual literature around multiple religious belonging with data from the Caribbean island of Cuba."--Pages ii-iii.
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Title: "A free ballot and a fair count" : the Department of Justice and the enforcement of voting rights in the South, 1877-1893
Creator: Goldman, Robert Michael
Date: 1976
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "A nation can rise no higher than its women" : the critical role of Black Muslim women in the development and purveyance of Black consciousness, 1945 - 1975
Creator: Jeffries, Bayyinah Sharief
Date: 2009
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "A place to call home" : the rhetoric of Filipinx-American place-making
Creator: Mahnke, Stephanie
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: In this dissertation, I analyze the place-making efforts of the Philippine American Cultural Center of Michigan, a space for Detroit's Filipinx community. By looking at the place-making process from the center's earliest conception to later development, this study aims to determine the negotiations and factors that influence the production and sustainment of space based on the group's cultural ideology. To gather and analyze data, I coded the center's planning minutes from 1980 to 2001,...
Show moreIn this dissertation, I analyze the place-making efforts of the Philippine American Cultural Center of Michigan, a space for Detroit's Filipinx community. By looking at the place-making process from the center's earliest conception to later development, this study aims to determine the negotiations and factors that influence the production and sustainment of space based on the group's cultural ideology. To gather and analyze data, I coded the center's planning minutes from 1980 to 2001, followed by interviews with members of the original planning committee and center's leaders. All findings are validated by the community through the Filipinx indigenous interviewing method of pagtatanung-tanung. Through analysis of the documents and interviews, I conclude the distinct rhetoric of this center's Filipinx-American place-making is a result of negotiated Filipinx values to prioritize beliefs in unity and reciprocity, creating a materially and symbolically malleable cultural center to accommodate different forms of members' "giving back". Results of the study may inform cultural rhetoricians' methodology and fuller treatment of place-making as a rhetorical process, and community organizers of the importance of accounting for distinct cultural ideologies which influence place-making efforts.
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Title: "A ray of hope for liberation" : blacks in the South Carolina Extension Service, 1915-1970
Creator: Harris, Carmen Veneita
Date: 2002
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "A single finger cannot lift a stone" : local organizations and democracy in Mali
Creator: Davis, John Uniack
Date: 1999
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "Accepting and embracing my disability" : describing the life experiences of Latinas/os with physical disabilities who have abused substances
Creator: Córdova, David
Date: 2010
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "Afrographie" : l'écriture comme sites de conflits identitaires dans l'œuvre romanesque d'Ahmadou Kourouma
Creator: Nzokizwanimana, Pierre
Date: 2006
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "All of us would walk together" : the transition from slavery to freedom at St. Mary's City, Maryland
Creator: Brock, Terry Peterkin
Date: 2014
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "ALL OF US WOULD WALK TOGETHER": THE TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM AT ST. MARY'S CITY, MARYLANDbyTerry Peterkin BrockIn 1840, Dr. John Mackall Brome inherited his father's plantation along the St. Mary's River in St. Mary's County, Maryland. Over the ensuing decades, Brome built his plantation into one of the largest in Southern Maryland, both in acreage and slaveholdings. By the Civil War, his plan- tation landscape had been entirely rebuilt, and was home to over 60 enslaved African...
Show more"ALL OF US WOULD WALK TOGETHER": THE TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM AT ST. MARY'S CITY, MARYLANDbyTerry Peterkin BrockIn 1840, Dr. John Mackall Brome inherited his father's plantation along the St. Mary's River in St. Mary's County, Maryland. Over the ensuing decades, Brome built his plantation into one of the largest in Southern Maryland, both in acreage and slaveholdings. By the Civil War, his plan- tation landscape had been entirely rebuilt, and was home to over 60 enslaved African Americans. This dissertation examines how Brome managed his plantation during and after slavery, and how African Americans used, reused, modified, and changed the plantation landscape to survive their bondage and define their freedom after slavery.Examining the transition from slavery to freedom has received limited attention in archaeo- logical analysis, and this research introduces a model for understanding the transition through the plantation landscape. The landscape was a critical form of control developed by planters to ef- ficiently produce archaeological crops and manage enslaved laborers. This system, in place for centuries in the American South, was entirely reformed after the emancipation of African Ameri- can laborers. This study will examine how Brome's strategy for managing his labor changed over time, and how African Americans leveraged their newfound freedom to define their freedom and establish independence.This transition is particularly unique in Maryland, which sided with the Union during the Civil War, and which underwent multiple changes in its agricultural economy throughout the 19th cen- tury, transitioning from tobacco to wheat to meat and dairy production. This complicates the traditional narrative of post-Emancipation agricultural relationships between blacks and whites, as Marylander's began producing less labor intensive crops. Meanwhile, African Americans used their new freedoms to change the way they used space to organize their households, build families, and establish communities on and off the plantation.A number of spheres will be interrogated to understand how space was used before and afterslavery. The plantation will be considered as a whole to understand the way the built environment changed through time, including Brome's plantation redesign during the 1840s and its decline through the rest of the century. Brome's use of this landscape to establish control of his slaves and demonstrate his power to his peers will be examined, and how this was effected by the Civil War and Emancipation. For African Americans, a number of spaces on the plantation will be examined, including the plantation proper, the African American domestic sphere, work areas including the manor home, and the wilderness to provide insight into the way that African Americans used space differently after Emancipation. These spaces will be considered in the context of household formation and community building, extending to areas off the plantation.This research demonstrates that Brome used his landscape as a means of controlling his en- slaved laborers and to demonstrate his power through a performative space to his peers. The regular presence of Union soldiers during the Civil War, crippled his control, and provided the necessary cracks for enslaved laborers to resist their bondage and gain freedom. After the War, Brome's agricultural pursuits transition from large sharecropping towards less labor intensive crops and investments in the railroad, resulting in the reduction of his plantation size by the 1880s.Enslaved African Americans reused plantation spaces to create alternate plantation landscapes. They modified their households to mitigate the effects of slavery, and used space on and off the plantation to build communities. After the Civil War, African American reconstituted their fam- ilies into households, and began to separate their community spaces from the white landscape. Instead of reusing space on the plantation, they instead created independent spaces where they could practice family, household and community interactions.
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Title: "Am I my other's keeper?" : alterity, dialogic representation and polyphonic ethical discourse in later antebellum American fiction
Creator: Gaertner, Stephen Andrew
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Hayden White argues that to create a narrative is to “moralize.” As historicists assert, the moral content of a narrative reflects the social, cultural and political discourses in which it is constructed as well as the ethical value systems that such discourses contain. However, context does not reveal the entire story. Mikhail Bakhtin holds that narratives are polyphonic, that is, they contain multiple, competing discourses, at times represented through singular idiolects. But what are these...
Show moreHayden White argues that to create a narrative is to “moralize.” As historicists assert, the moral content of a narrative reflects the social, cultural and political discourses in which it is constructed as well as the ethical value systems that such discourses contain. However, context does not reveal the entire story. Mikhail Bakhtin holds that narratives are polyphonic, that is, they contain multiple, competing discourses, at times represented through singular idiolects. But what are these various voices talking about, and to whom? Polyphonic or “carnivalesque” narratives rehearse and contest contrasting ethical paradigms, exposing their discursive limits as well as their transcendent possibilities in a given milieu. Thus, the text manifests the emergence of a dialogic exchange between ethical discourses, the yield of which is a creative destabilization that that resists the archaeological confinement of time, place and ideology. Therefore, I engage an ethical formalist rereading of a selection of antebellum narrative fictions in order to probe the discursive possibilities latent within the texts’ moral imaginaries. In addition to deploying Bakhtin’s work on polyphonic narrative, I use Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical theory of alterity that stresses the moral agent’s duty to respond on behalf of an individualized subject otherwise totalized by an oppressive, thematizing discourse. Whereas Levinas describes the moment of this ethical demand as the face-to-face encounter, I argue that the responsive duty suggested by the instance of inter-subjective recognition is represented within fiction as dialogue, in addition to the more subtle discourses that the narrator adds. Beyond exposing the text’s ethical tensions, these dialogic moments reflect the discursive polyphony theorized by Bakhtin, multi-vocal eruptions often signaled by a perichoresis of distinct idiolects. The works I discuss—James Fenimore Cooper’s Littlepage Trilogy, Herman Melville’s Israel Potter and “Benito Cereno,” Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall and Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig—all contain ethical discourses elaborated through idiolectical dialogic structures and polyphony. Furthermore, the context of their production—the late-antebellum United States—situates them within ethical conversations on totalization and interpersonal duty for the Other in that the modernizing republic was struggling with the moral implications of Indian removal, African slavery, urban labor, poverty and gender oppression. Yet, a Levinasian reading of antebellum U.S. literature invites looking beyond ideological power discourses. In addition to reflecting how American republicanism and capitalism of the mid-1800’s totalized, confined and dehumanized disempowered Others, these texts evidence rhetorical ambivalence respecting the status of the differentiated Other and the moral subject’s duty to the Other in a capitalist republic obsessed with categorical ordering and uncomfortable with ambiguity. Despite their concerns with political, social and ethical regulation, though, these polyphonic works contain transcendent ethical counter-discourses on duty and Otherness that expose a symbiosis between radical Others, peoples otherwise divided by contrasting ethical, political, cultural, racial or socioeconomic alignments.
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Title: "And they lynched him on a tree" : a critical analysis
Creator: Williams, Brandon (College teacher)
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The end of the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment freeing the slaves meant, at least in theory, that these newly freed individuals could begin to make the transition toward integration into American society as full citizens. White citizens opposed to the abolition of slavery were determined to assert their dominance and control and did so through a series of violent measures and discriminatory laws. Lynching was a primary way to demonstrate power and incite fear in...
Show moreThe end of the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment freeing the slaves meant, at least in theory, that these newly freed individuals could begin to make the transition toward integration into American society as full citizens. White citizens opposed to the abolition of slavery were determined to assert their dominance and control and did so through a series of violent measures and discriminatory laws. Lynching was a primary way to demonstrate power and incite fear in Black communities. Anti-lynching campaigns supported by both Black and White citizens took root in response to the violence. While literary and visual protest art that protested lynching seemed to flourish, there were surprisingly few musical counterparts. Despite years of what seemed like no hope for the resolution of racial turmoil and no models on which to base such a piece, William Grant Still and Catharine Garrison Chapin broke new ground by creating And They Lynched Him On A Tree, the first piece of concert music that protests lynching. This dramatic choral work for orchestra and racially divided choirs was well-received at its premiere, but the provocative title, intense subject matter, and atypical vocal forces have rendered it a less than desirable piece for performance. Its message is evermore resonant in today’s sensitive climate of race relations, social injustice, and perceived police brutality. And They Lynched Him On A Tree deserves to be performed not as a “token” work by an African American, but as a well-crafted American masterpiece and a plea for justice and peace. This study will present the historical and social context in which the work was composed; explore prominent artistic contributions to the anti-lynching campaign of the 1920s and 1930s; discuss the creative forces that merged to create this groundbreaking work; give a structural overview of the text and musical ideas; and provide suggestions that address some inherent performance and programming challenges.
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Title: "As if by accident." Nurturing cognitive skills in the U.S. and Finland : an intercultural exploration of two televised learning environments
Creator: Jackson, Jacqueline L., II
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This study is an intercultural exploration of programming for early learners in the televised learning environments in America and Finland. It aims to demonstrate that what is observable in schools and classrooms – pedagogical philosophy, instructional strategy, cognitive target and underlying cultural allowances and provisions which forward learning – is also evident in the brief space of the televised learning program. My thesis adheres to the broader theory of opportunity to learn (OTL),...
Show moreThis study is an intercultural exploration of programming for early learners in the televised learning environments in America and Finland. It aims to demonstrate that what is observable in schools and classrooms – pedagogical philosophy, instructional strategy, cognitive target and underlying cultural allowances and provisions which forward learning – is also evident in the brief space of the televised learning program. My thesis adheres to the broader theory of opportunity to learn (OTL), which suggests that formal learning is contingent upon student engagement, which is constrained by limited classroom and content coverage time (Schmidt et al., 2001, 2011; Schmidt & Maier, 2009). My interpretive approach demonstrates how OTL operates through cultural and social systems by example of the televised programs selected for study; and shows how these programs provide multiple encounters with cognitive content that reinforce and reproduce culturally preferred cognitive capabilities. I derive the proposed cognitive targets through qualitative analysis of problem-solving scenarios in one episode of each of the selected programs. The two programs present the occasion to 1) identify the cognitive skills targeted in the episodes studied; 2) to characterize the instructional strategies applied to reinforce the dominant cognitive task; 3) and to consider the underlying sociocultural assumptions in these two national settings that inform the pedagogical approach to shaping naturally developing, cognitive proclivities distinctively targeted in the two episodes. Findings suggest that Finnish play-based instructional strategies support the dynamics of children’s play space and heighten self-awareness, a central component of metacognition, by example of the problem-solving scenarios of the early learning program, Sana-Arkku. I suggest that the play-based deductive teaching strategies in these scenarios employ a challenge course intended to strengthen learners’ self-control. In contrast, the lesson from the problem-solving scenarios of the U.S. early learning program, Between the Lions, is cooperative work and cooperative inquiry. The teamwork approach in the problem-solving strategies of the characters Click, Cliff Hanger and Opposite Bunny emphasizes group projects in a K12 public education which expects prosocial skills, in particular, benevolence. While this pedagogical approach may have a strategic advantage in promoting democratic goals, it may present a strategic weakness for achieving academic excellence. The American focus in this comparative analysis raises the following vital question; what – in terms of cognitive development – the costs and benefits of this prosocial emphasis on group work may be to the individual learner. The implications for both the classroom and the televised learning spaces are clear: first is the need to design and test the effectiveness of metacognitively enriched exercises for classroom instruction aimed at enhancing individual cognitive development and, based on positive outcomes, to design, produce and test the effectiveness of metacognitively enriched children’s educational television programs across early learning student demographics. Positive outcomes would warrant policy revision in the recommended pedagogical approach in K12 classrooms, and a re-visitation of key legislation governing the level and type of cognitive content required in children’s educational television programming. This research has sought to find the missing element in the U.S. televised children’s learning experience, which could be helpful, specifically, to the academic achievement of low-income early learners; I believe that missing element is the effective promotion of metacognitive development.
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Title: "Because we are important!" : music educators and special education paraprofessionals in a community of practice
Creator: Grimsby, Rachel Leigh-Mallory
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: With the intent of developing an effective community of practice (CoP) that addresses the professional development, instructional, and collaborative needs of music educators and special education paraprofessionals (SEPs), the purpose of this study was to examine the instructional processes, perceptions, and practices of music educators and SEPs in regard to teaching music to students with disabilities. The "grand tour" question of this study was: How does a community of practice offer...
Show moreWith the intent of developing an effective community of practice (CoP) that addresses the professional development, instructional, and collaborative needs of music educators and special education paraprofessionals (SEPs), the purpose of this study was to examine the instructional processes, perceptions, and practices of music educators and SEPs in regard to teaching music to students with disabilities. The "grand tour" question of this study was: How does a community of practice offer collaboration and instructional support for music educators and SEPs? Research questions were as follows: 1) How do music educators and SEPs interact within a community of practice? 2) Does a community of practice impact the instructional and collaborative practices of music teachers and SEPs, and if so, how does it manifest in the classroom? 3) How does a community of practice shift participants' pedagogical and philosophical beliefs concerning teaching students with disabilities? 4) How does a community of practice facilitate growth and collaborative planning in ways that the school structures cannot? What does this tell us about music educator and SEP needs? 5) What aspects of the community of practice were most difficult for the participants, the easiest, and what did they find most useful?This was an instrumental case study (Stake, 1995, 2005; Merriam, 1988, 1998) of a group of music educators and special education paraprofessionals in a social learning community. As participants met, and relationships began to form, a community of practice emerged. Six participants, three music educators and three SEPs participated in this study which consisted of eight collaborative meetings that took place over the course of four months. I collected throughout the study, beginning with initial interviews and ending with exit interviews. Participants engaged in five meetings in-person at a local library, and three online via Discord®, an online voice and text chat platform. I observed in their classrooms twice over the duration of the study. Participants found the collaborative nature of the group to be the most beneficial. While instructional practices were only impacted moderately through participation in this community of practice, participant perceptions of their colleagues were changed. Participants stated they felt they understood more fully the perspective of their colleagues as well as how to more effectively collaborate with them.
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