UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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Author: search.filters.author.Malone, Shoji VonSubject: search.filters.subject.black church

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    RUBIES IN THEIR CROWNS:AN EXAMINATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN CHURCH WOMEN AND HEAD FASHION
    (2021) Malone, Shoji Von; Williams Forson, Psyche A; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Church hats and other head adornments are a major component of Sunday morning worship for many Black Christian women. Wearing a hat, also known as a crown, is a part of the Sunday ritual and culture of Black churches. This dissertation, Rubies in Their Crowns: An Examination of African American Church Women and Head Fashion, explores the ways in which Black women’s clothing, especially head adornment, aid in revealing how they self-define, self-actualize, and perform self-awarenesss. I argue that Black church women have used and continue to use head adornment to express themselves socially, culturally, and politically. Through head adornment these women begin to create, define, and express Black womanhood differently throughout time. Methodologies in material culture studies, visual culture studies, cultural studies, and ethnography using intersectionality are employed to conduct close readings of primary sources—images, newspaper articles, catalogues, and church manuals. Additionally, I conducted life history interviews with eleven hat-wearing Black church women. These participants from the Mid-Atlantic to the Midwest, illuminate the ways that head adornments tell stories of access, creativity, and entrepreneurship. In revealing Black women’s role as cultural producers their words also unveil how their hats become decorated crowns.