American Studies
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Item Re-Visioning Violence: How Black Youth Advance Critical Understandings of Violence in Climates of Criminalization(2009) McCants, Johonna Rachelle; Struna, Nancy; Woods, Clyde A.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While Black youth are often framed as the perpetrators of violence in the mainstream media and other sites, they are rarely consulted for their views on violence. This dissertation examines how Black youth and other young people of color have used hip hop music and community organizing to publicly articulate their analysis of violence and shape public discourses, ideologies and policies. The project is principally framed by Black feminist theory and Critical Race Theory, and uses discourse analysis, cultural criticism, and historical analysis as its primary methods of analysis. I examine hip hop lyrics and materials produced during community organizing campaigns, alongside a range of sources that reflect dominant frameworks on youth and violence such as television programs and sociological scholarship. This study argues firstly, that there is a discourse of "youth violence"; secondly, that this discourse is central to the criminalization of young people of color; and thirdly, that criminalization facilitates epistemic violence, harm and injury that results from the production of hegemonic knowledge. Finally, I draw on youths' perspectives and social change practices to theorize the concept of epistemic resistance, and show how youth have engaged in epistemic resistance in various ways. Youth have used hip hop music to redefine what counts as violence, who is involved in violence, and why violence among youth occurs; conducted participatory action research projects to influence and change the content of mainstream media; and developed and promoted the discourse of a "war on youth" in organizing campaigns that challenge punitive policy proposals introduced as solutions to "youth violence." This dissertation provides a re-theorized framing of and knowledge about the intellect and agency of marginalized youth. It also provides youth studies scholars with conceptual and methodological approaches for future scholarship on youth, violence, and safety. Lastly, this dissertation informs urban youth policy and grassroots organizing for transformative justice, a vision and practice of attaining safety and justice through personal and social transformation, rather than reliance on the criminal legal system.Item Ghetto Proclivities: Race and Class in a Model Minority Memoir(2008-09-23) Sandosharaj, Alice; Caughey, John; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores the relationship between Model Minorities and Black Americans through the lens of memoir. Drawing on approaches in self-ethnography and cultural biography, the memoir details my experience growing up South Asian in Langley Park, a poor "inner ring" suburb of Washington, DC that had, at the time (1978-1995), a majority Black population. The memoir is supplemented by an introduction, three interlude essays and a conclusion that consider the social and cultural contexts in which my experience of shifting identifications took place. Blackness, both as a construct to define what is American, as well as a barometer for exclusion from America, is examined alongside the Model Minority Myth in terms of how each, in competing and often unequal measure, can affect South Asian identity construction in ways that can complicate conventional ethnic and class identity. The discourse of the myth, with its reliance on an "invisible" structurally based lineage, bequeaths entitlements to Asians akin to white privilege. This "presumptive capital" can manifest in real world byproducts even in the absence of economic privilege, even when said model minority shares class kinship, geography and aesthetic with historically disadvantaged Black Americans from low-income circumstances. This relationship--contested, mercurial and contingent--reveals the necessity of surveying the racialized American landscape with a panoramic lens that acknowledges the interrelated, dependent spaces upon which we all draw and to which we all contribute. This dissertation assesses some of the complex, multiple ways in which a single life within a specific community can be influenced by Black American, White American and Asian American racial and cultural constructions.Item Disturbing the Peace: Cultural Narratives and Reparations(2007-09-19) Scott, Jesse James; Parks, Sheri L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Disturbing the Peace: Cultural Narratives and Reparations African Americans' pursuit of reparations began in the eighteenth century and continues in the present. At the twilight of the twentieth century, African American slavery and reparations for that experience became a controversial topic in popular and public discourse. Inevitably, the conversation turned to economics, specifically monetary compensation. Responding to this now-global controversy, Nigerian scholar Chinweizu observed that reparations are not primarily about money. Instead, he insists, reparations are about psychological repairs, institutional repairs, educational repairs, self-made repairs, repairs of all types. Drawing on Chinweizu's conception of reparations, "Disturbing the Peace: Cultural Narratives and Reparations" examines Toni Morrison's Beloved, Ernest Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying, Sidney Lumet's The Wiz, Spike Lee's Get on the Bus, and Marc Forster's Monster's Ball as cultural narratives that illuminate the pitfalls of pursuing reparations that are restricted to the legal arena. While this dissertation responds to a historical-political project, I do not offer these cultural narratives as political instruction on how to pursue reparations. Rather, this project examines how individuals and communities within these cultural narratives pursue reparations outside of the legal arena. Despite popular representations of the pursuit of reparations as being primarily about money, I argue that the pursuit of reparations is also a narrative pursuit that disturbs the highly imagined peace of national unity. As such, investigating cultural narratives for the ways in which they engage and revise popular notions of reparations encourages a more expansive approach to identifying and repairing racial injuries for individuals and communities. Narrative does more than calculate debts; it reminds individuals of what they owe both to themselves and to the communities they inhabit, reminds them that their lives and their histories are more than notations in slave ledgers, and reminds them that they are, first and foremost, human beings. Against this legal history, the cultural narratives under consideration in "Disturbing the Peace" suggest, as does Chinweizu, that reparations depend on communities' willingness and/or ability to initiate self-made repairs.Item Shadow Politics in the Rich Light of Day: Black Youth, Political Socialization, and one Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area High School(2006-06-14) Fishman, Darwin Ben; Walters, Ron; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: SHADOW POLITICS IN THE RICH LIGHT OF DAY: BLACK YOUTH, POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION, AND ONE WASHINGTON, D.C. METROPOLITAN AREA HIGH SCHOOL Darwin Ben Fishman, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 Dissertation directed by: Professor Ron Walters Department of Government and Politics There is still a lot that is not known about how we develop our political identity and why we retain certain parts of our political identity and shed other parts. Most of the research done in the last forty years was based on the assumption that political socialization occurred during youth and that youth learned some of their most important political lessons while in school. The current field of political socialization has expanded and changed greatly, but still retains youth identity formation as the foundation of most scholarly work. The racial and quantitative bias of this past research on political socialization has been neglected. These theoretical and methodological concerns have provided the basis for my research. To be able to address these issues and to delve more deeply into these issues, I have focused my work on the political socialization of Black youth. I decided to conduct an ethnographic research project to be able examine the political socialization process for Black youth and to be able address some of the larger questions about the field of political socialization and identity politics. This project was based on observations and interviews in one African American History elective class for Juniors and Seniors in a public high school. This high school was located in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area, and it was nestled in a poor working class suburban area. The research gave me insight into the lives of Black youth's political socialization from a unique perspective. Unlike past race neutral work and quantitative research, this ethnographic research illustrated how complicated and contradictory Black youth political socialization can be. I found the students' lack of knowledge about local, state, and national political affairs was not matched by an equally apparent lack of interest or enthusiasm for political issues or participation. Instead I found that the students were most passionate and well versed in a few, very specific political areas. This ethnographic approach did not produce a way to avoid these awkward points, but it instead created the space in which many of these contradictory trends could be re-stitched together in a more meaningful fashion.Item "HUNGRY TO SEE OURSELVES REFLECTED": IDENTITY, REPRESENTATION AND BLACK FEMALE SPECTATORSHIP(2004-10-12) George, Eva Marie; Parks, Sheri L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While much has been written about the portrayals of Black women in popular culture, scholars have observed that little attention is paid to the experiences of Black women as cultural consumers. This analysis of Black female spectatorship examines theories related to this experience and the various relationships individuals may have with media. This study sheds light on the ways Black women's spectatorship is shaped by gender, race, class and sexual orientation. Through qualitative methods, we hear the voices of Black women in the Washington, D.C. area reflecting on various forms of popular culture, particularly film. Some of the media women responded to in this study include Waiting to Exhale, The Best Man, Jungle Fever, among others. Responses from a focus group, on-on-one interviews and questionnaires provide evidence of the ways in which Black women engage in multiple relationships with images they see in the media. Ultimately, many of the African American women in this study disregard negative images of Black women and purposely choose types of media that sustain their sense of self and help them maintain a positive identity.