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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2016 - 20192

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Black Feminist Theory

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    Theorizing the Brave: Black Girlhood, Affect, and Performance in Kirsten Childs's The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin
    (2019) Ealey, Jordan Alexandria; Chatard Carpenter, Faedra; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    “Theorizing the Brave” is a critical study of Kirsten Childs’s musical, The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (2000). Through a textual analysis of the musical’s book and lyrics as well as a thorough consideration of the musical’s historical context and implications, this thesis investigates the overarching question: How does Bubbly Black Girl interrogate the precarious political position of Black girls and women in the theatre? Specifically, how does Childs’s musical challenge and reframe notions of Blackness, girlhood, womanhood, and sexuality? By critically engaging The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin, this thesis project employs theoretical frameworks of Black feminist theory, critical race theory, and affect theory to examine how Childs interrogates and reformulates the discourse around Black girls and women in the American theatre, thereby also challenging the constrictive scripting of Black girlhood and womanhood in everyday life.
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    (inter)FACE: A Study of Black Families Advocating for their Children’s Education
    (2016) Morant, Tamyka; Brown, Tara M; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Black students are consistently overrepresented in categories of academic underachievement. Parent engagement has long been touted as an effective strategy for improving the educational outcomes of Black children. However, most parent engagement research reflects deficit based perspectives frame Black parents as problems that must be fixed or mitigated before they can positively contribute to their children’s education. Consequently, parent engagement research and frameworks ignore the perspectives of Black parents and the assets they use to participate effectively in parent engagement. In this case study, I draw on individual and focus group interview data, documents, and observations, to examine how fifteen Black families, collectively known as FACE: 1) define and participate in parental engagement, 2) experience barriers to and opportunities for engagement, and 3) experience benefits of engagement for their children and their own personal development. Guided by Black Feminist and Critical Race Theories, I show how Black families in this study used a myriad of engagement strategies to improve their children’s educational experiences which were invisible to schools and how they used school-sanctioned engagement activities to meet their own objectives. Ultimately, I argue that school-centered parent engagement frameworks and models are ineffective for empowering Black families and accounting for the essential ways that these families contribute to the well-being of their children. Based on my findings, I discuss implications for theory, practice and policy, and research, and make recommendations for a more family-centered approach to parent engagement.