Reclaiming Black Beledi: Race, Wellness, And Online Community

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dc.contributor.advisorWilliams-Forson, Psycheen_US
dc.contributor.authorVelazquez, Maria Inezen_US
dc.contributor.departmentAmerican Studiesen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2015-09-18T05:46:55Z
dc.date.available2015-09-18T05:46:55Z
dc.date.issued2015en_US
dc.description.abstractIn this dissertation, I analyze love, affect, and embodiment online. I specifically focus on belly dance because of its history as a kind of conscious and public laboring on the self. By situating belly dance as an imperial legacy of U.S. military engagement in the Middle East, I unveil its critical utility to bloggers’ discussion of wellness, self-care, and the affective consequences of living within imperialist and racist societies. I conclude by introducing the concept of a digital praxis of love, paying particular attention to digital black feminisms, wellness blogging, and dance. This project draws its exegesis from current scholarship on corporeal, physical feminisms, and digital feminisms in order to point towards a definition of praxis online as incorporating critical reflection, critical action, and everyday public life. This exploratory dissertation incorporates a variety of methodologies in order to investigate the movement of wellness, self-care, and critique as these concepts move through overlapping knowledge worlds, spaces, and sites of consumption. By doing so, this dissertation highlights the connections between conversations about wellness and conversations about politics. Analyzing these connections offers an important intervention in wellness studies, the digital humanities, and American studies by illustrating the role wellness (and its digital objects) plays in performing citizenship, group membership, and social justice activism.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/M2T06C
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/17003
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledAmerican studiesen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledWomen's studiesen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledAfrican American studiesen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledbelly danceen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledblack womenen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledbloggingen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolleddigital black feminismen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledonline communityen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledwellnessen_US
dc.titleReclaiming Black Beledi: Race, Wellness, And Online Communityen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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