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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    CREATING A SOCIALLY JUST KINESIOLOGY: ADDRESSING ANTI-BLACKNESS IN THEORY, RESEARCH, AND PEDAGOGY
    (2024) Justin, Tori Alexis; Jette, Shannon; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Currently, the National Academy of Kinesiology (NAK) is striving to create a socially just kinesiology (DePauw, 2021). The NAK call to action is informed, in part, by emergent scholarship that examines how dominant approaches in kinesiology often discount the importance of developing anti-racist, critical, and equitable pedagogy (e.g., Armstrong, 2022). While this scholarship brings attention to kinesiology’s centering of whiteness and the persistent stereotyping of (in)active Black bodies, what is missing is an examination of how/if anti-Black explanations of corporeality manifest across differing spaces in contemporary kinesiology and, if present, what form(s) they take. My dissertation addresses the above-identified gap by using a three-manuscript model to examine three 'spaces’ of kinesiology: theoretical, research, and pedagogical.In manuscript 1 (Chapter 2), I engage Black feminist theory to critically evaluate the tenets of Physical Cultural Studies (PCS). In doing so, I identify a significant theoretical and empirical oversight in PCS scholarship, namely the tendency to reify white Eurocentric epistemo-logics and disregard Black feminist thought by emphasizing Black masculinity and white feminist imperatives in examinations of race and gender. To disrupt this practice, I propose a Black feminist informed reconceptualization of four principal PCS tenets (pedagogical, political, qualitative, and theoretical). Manuscript 2 (Chapter 3) delves into research spaces by investigating how notions of “race” and “racial difference” are constructed in cardiovascular health (CVH) and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) research. I conducted a scoping review to systematically identify original research articles (N=236) that included “race” in their examinations of CRF and CVH and then analyzed the sample to ascertain how each article approached “race” and “racial difference”. Key findings include: the majority (77.5%) of the studies did not define race; more than half of the studies (58.6%) compared Black and white racial groups in their examinations; 45.2% of the studies positioned white research participants as the ‘average’ or ‘normal’ in comparison to other racial groups; and only one article discussed the possible role of racism in relation to their identification of racial difference in an outcome of interest. These findings illustrate the need for CRF and CVH examinations to engage scientific best practice on how to research “race” and “racial differences” in ways that avoid reproducing racialized stereotypes. Manuscript 3 (Chapter 4) considers how Black women doctoral students experience pedagogical spaces of kinesiology departments. By conducting semi-structured open-ended interviews (N=10) with current and former Black women graduate students in kinesiology, I examine participants’ perspectives on how/if anti-Black explanations of corporeality inform kinesiology research practice and curriculum, and how the participants experience these pedagogies. Key themes identified are: kinesiological research tends to employ “colorblind research methods”; these methods contribute to monocultural and ahistorical understandings of (in)active bodies and health; and participants experience resistance to institutionally-backed attempts to disrupt white normativity. For kinesiology to transform into the socially just field that NAK is advocating, kinesiologists must consider how anti-Blackness can inadvertently manifest in their theories, research practices, and pedagogies. I provide practical suggestions throughout the dissertation on how to move toward change in each of these spaces.
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    The Songs of Her Possibilities: Black Women-Authored Musicals from the Nineteenth Century to the Present
    (2023) Ealey, Jordan Alexandria; Chatard Carpenter, Faedra; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The Songs of Her Possibilities: Black Women Authored Musicals from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, examines Pauline Hopkins, Zora Neale Hurston, Vinnette Carroll, Micki Grant, and Kirsten Childs as black women creators of music theatre and their use of the form for social, political, and creative interventions. In so doing, I argue that these creators employ the form of the musical as a site for black feminist intellectual production through dramaturgical strategies in playwriting, composition, and direction. My project is animated by these major questions: How do Hopkins, Hurston, Grant, Carroll, and Childs employ the form of the musical to significant sociopolitical ends? How do their respective musicals creatively shape how musical theatre is researched, taught, and circulated? And finally, how do the black women creators at the center of this study reject, remake, and revise musical forms to challenge, critique, and change the overdetermined boundaries of the artistry and scholarship of musical theatre?In musical theatre, there is often an adherence to a strict dramaturgy of integration; that is, the dialogue, music, choreography, and other elements of a given musical must be perfectly uniformed. Black women musical theatre creators, however, are not bound to this dramaturgy and challenge it. I contend that this is accomplished through what I call strategic dissonance—a black feminist dramaturgical strategy that makes use of disintegrated and disjointed elements as an artistic method. This method is drawn from their material realities as black women (and the multidirectional nature of navigating black womanhood) to reflect the realities of black life and propose new ways of living. The project uses a significant amount of research from different archival sites such as the Library of Congress, Fisk University, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Currently, no manuscript exists that explores and examines this under-theorized and under-documented history; thus, my project intervenes in the invisibilization of these musicals from the historical narrative of American musical theatre. Therefore, The Songs of Her Possibilities simultaneously argues for the significance of black women’s musical theatre for black feminist worldmaking capabilities.