American Studies
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Item Reimagining Resilience: Exploring Black Early Adolescent Girls’ Experiences, Desires, and Needs While Growing Up In Baltimore City(2018) Akoumany, Stephanie Yvonne; Parks, Sheri L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"Reimagining Resilience: Exploring Black Early Adolescent Girls’ Experiences, Desires, and Needs While Growing Up In Baltimore City" asks the following research questions: What are black early adolescent girls’ resilience strategies while growing up in poor and working class communities in Baltimore City? What are the girls’ perceptions of their own life experiences, desires, needs, and the quality of their interpersonal relationships? This dissertation is informed by a three year longitudinal ethnographic and participant action research study, conducted from 2010-2013, at a Baltimore City public school. Eighty-five, hour-long, weekly and biweekly workshops were conducted with 55 black middle school girls between the ages of 11-14 years old, who were in three different grade-based cohorts, until their respective eighth grade graduations. The black early adolescent girls in this study shared that their major stressors were feeling misunderstood, increased domestic and academic responsibilities as they transitioned into adolescence, conflicts with peers and adults, cyberbullying on popular social media sites, race, gender, and class stigmatization and policing at school, a lack of social supports, pressure to engage in sexual activities, physical and sexual violation, navigating structurally decaying neighborhoods, and community violence. This dissertation argues that black early adolescent girls utilize resilience strategies, particularly, self-assertion, storytelling, creativity, play, and community building to cope with these daily stressors and other traumatic life events. This dissertation explores connections between adolescent development, relational aggression, adverse childhood experiences, emotional intelligence, neuroplasticity, and resilience. It suggests that holistic wellness approaches such as mindfulness and play based therapy, socioemotional learning opportunities, restorative justice, facilitated intergroup dialogue, story exchange, participant action research, and comprehensive and medically accurate sexual education interventions that listen to black girls’ perceptions of their own experiences and needs can help schools promote health equity among adolescents in Baltimore City, the United States, and the world.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.