Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Dissertating Black History

32 Days of Black History is a blogathon celebrating Black History Month hosted by Mamalicious! and Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. We are joined by WhatTamiSaid; Inkognegro; and Chris repping SCSU in The Dawg House. Check them out.

Today's 32Days entry is supposed to be about books. But instead of books per se I am going to highlight several dissertations from last year related to Black history and culture. I wouldn't be a proper academic (and one who so recently completed a dissertation herself) otherwise. I hope to write more later this month comparing my experiences doing scholarly research on a "Black" topic (M.S. @ Purdue) and a non-Black topic (here at the U. of MN). For people of color these can be two very different experiences, and to do either one must be brave in different ways.

But today's focus is on these recent dissertators.

A quick search of Digital Dissertations and I was surprised at the wide range of topics, institutions, research methods, and disciplines. The abstract excerpts below represent just a sampling of 2007 dissertations. I hope some of these (and some of the others) soon find their way from thick tomes on committee members' desks to mainstream publications and journal articles so that more folks can benefit from this important and fascinating work. In the meantime, congratulations, Doctors!

Give us this day our daily bread: The African American megachurch and Prosperity Theology
by Patterson, Charmayne E., Ph.D., Georgia State University

This dissertation explores the simultaneous rise of megachurches and Prosperity Theology within the black church.... My research begins with an examination of the traditional African American church and pastor, and an exploration of the recent growth of megachurches within the black community. In an attempt to better understand the Prosperity Gospel, I evaluated it in comparison to the Social Gospel, discovering the similarities and differences between the two movements.

...This dissertation compares the ministries of Dr. Creflo Dollar, Senior Pastor of Atlanta Georgia's World Changers Church International and Bishop Joseph W. Walker, III, Senior Pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee.... An examination of the teachings of Dr. Dollar and Bishop Walker indicate that Dr. Dollar's beliefs put him at odds with many traditionalists in the black church. In contrast, Bishop Walker's ministry more closely resembles that of a traditional African American church.... The research conducted suggests that Prosperity Theology may be useful in facilitating the goals of economic, social, and political empowerment historically advocated by the black church.

Aaron Douglas and Hale Woodruff: The social responsibility and expanded pedagogy of the Black artist
by Bey, Sharif, Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University

This study examines the expanded pedagogy and formal instruction of Aaron Douglas and Hale Woodruff, two African-American artists who came to prominence during the New Negro Movement, in the 1920s. The decades following the New Negro Movement marked a new era for the art education of African-American students when renowned African-American artists began to prepare future generations of artists and art educators. Douglas and Woodruff spent their tenures teaching the visual arts at historically Black universities in Nashville, Tennessee, and Atlanta, Georgia, respectively.... I specifically explore to what extent and for what goals racial consciousness and Black content were a part of the instruction, artwork, and lives of Douglas and Woodruff....

An osteobiography of an African diasporic skeletal sample: Integrating skeletal and historical information
by Renschler, Emily S., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

Human skeletal and dental material, as sensitive recorders of environmental conditions during life, can provide a rich storehouse of individual historical events. This characteristic is the basis of an "osteobiography" of a sample of crania from individuals who died shortly after arrival in Havana from Africa during the era of the Cuban slave trade....

The results of this examination are generally consistent with historical information. First, skeletal age data indicate that the majority of the individuals in the sample were adolescents and "prime-age" adults.... Second, as to the ancestry of the individuals represented, craniometric data supports an African origin as well as a high degree of individual heterogeneity within the sample.... Finally, paleopathological analysis of the sample suggests that these African born individuals faced less physiological stress than comparable individuals born into slavery in the New World.

Accomplishment and abandonment: A history of the Freedmen's Bureau schools
by Troost, William Frank, Ph.D., University of California, Irvine

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly referred to as the Freedmen's Bureau, was a governmental agency set up to assist freed slaves in their transition to their new lives.... While the bureau had many functions perhaps its most important was in helping to establish and maintain a system of schools for free blacks.

This study utilizes new data that makes an analysis of the bureau's educational activities possible. First, a data set on the location and number of bureau schools in a county is constructed from archival documents on the bureau's educational activities. The second resource that makes this analysis possible is newly available individual-level census data. This individual-level data makes it possible to assess the reach and impact of the bureau's educational effort in the early Reconstruction period....

Affirmative acts: Political piety in African American women's contemporary autobiography
by Ards, Angela Ann, Ph.D., Princeton University

"Affirmative Acts: Political Piety in African American Women's Contemporary Autobiography" examines works written in the last decade of the twentieth-century in response to the rise of social conservatism stateside and imperialism abroad: Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals of the Little Rock Nine; Unafraid of the Dark: A Memoir by journalist-cum-minister Rosemary Bray; and Soldier: A Poet's Childhood by poet, essayist, and activist June Jordan....

Under the assumption that cultural memories are the means by which societies constitute and re-constitute themselves, "Affirmative Acts" tracks the myriad ways these authors invoke, then consciously invert, the classic narrative of the civil rights movement: its iconographic events and images, as well as the religious tropes of suffering and sacrifice in which it has been traditionally framed....

Found insane in 'the Holy Land': Psychiatry and the African American experience in Illinois, 1870--1910
by Harris, Sean J., Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago

This work presents the encounter between African Americans struggling northward and the expanding state sponsored psychiatric system in Illinois. In the spirit of recent scholarship in disability history, it treats people who experienced disability as its subject, specifically individuals who belonged to two minority groups, one racial and the other disabled. Yielding insights that shed new light on American history generally, a disability studies approach here fills two particular voids by illuminating the experience of African Americans in psychiatric care and the history of medicine from the patients' perspective. In addition to exploring many unique facets of individual experience in the community and in the hospital, this dissertation examines how race became a criterion for distinguishing pathology from criminality, as well as determining the type and quality of mental health treatment....

P.S.: Want more scholarship on Black history? Check out the January special issue of Journal of Black Studies, Blacks in Canada: Retrospects, Introspects, Prospects.

Posted by perry032 at February 2, 2008 10:10 AM | TrackBack
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