Black Studies Or African American Studies Research Papers (original) (raw)

2025, Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

courts struggle to deal with litigation involving large numbers of claimants. A challenge in these cases is balancing the need for efficiency with opportunities for individualized claim assessment. Generally speaking, efficiency can be sacrificed at the expense of individualization, and vice-versa, but it is often difficult to strike a middle ground. The settlement process described in this article successfully managed this tension and as such can serve as a model for distributing a substantial fund in mass claims litigation.

2025, TEXTILE

A rtist Althea McNish's contribution both to the field of textile design in Britain and to British culture itself is unmatched. Amongst the first, if not the first, designer of African-Caribbean descent to achieve international recognition, McNish injected much-needed color and life into the post-war fashion and textiles industry from the 1950s onwards. As her partner and husband John Weiss writes, "She brought to London a tropical framework of reference." Presented here in this special issue of Textile are highlights from a conversation with Althea McNish and John Weiss that took place in the Stuart Hall Library, London, on April 25, 2015 as part of the "Clothes, Cloth and Culture Group" series of events.

2025, Journal of Communication and Language Arts. Vol 8.1. 43-62.

Throughout history, the trope of invisibility has always been ascribed to black Americans, right from period of intense slavery till twentieth century post-emancipation era and beyond. And for centuries, African American literature has always exposed racist inclinations and identity disillusionment that have characterised blacks as the periphery of the American society. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man encapsulates the postcolonial preoccupations of despotism, racial discrimination, as well as physical and mental subjugation often associated with blacks in American society. Beyond this notion, this paper re-engages invisibility as a metaphor that deconstructs the oppressive stance of racism. It further explores the trope of invisibility not as element of physical and psychological subjugation, but as inherent reconstruction ofblack assertiveness.

2025, Ibadan Journal of English Studies

Roots, by Alex Haley, one of the most famous African American slave narratives, has, over time, been critiqued more as a historical text than a literary and creative extension of the African American people. In addition, the tenet of Afrocentricism in the novel has been grossly misrepresented. The research examines the inherent exegesis of Afrocentricism vis-à-vis the notion of Resistance, which constitutes a core thematic precoccupation in the novel and which expurgates the nuances of extremist Afrocentricism. Premised on these two sub-tenets of postcolonialism, this study addresses the complexity of identity construction in the novel. It demonstrates that Afrocentricism and Resistance foreground the sure-fire import of Roots among other collective bodies of African American literature that aptly respond to the theme of slavery, its aftermaths, and identity reconstruction. It reaffirms the position of Roots as a canonical literary text which also explicitly projects the tune of liberal Afrocentricism as a crucial step towards identity reconstruction among Africans and people from African descent; the debate of liberal Afrocentricism as a viable roadmap to self-discovery; and a physical and psychological rebirth that accentuates the success tale of African American people. It contends that the total emancipation of the African and African American societies lies mainly in the consistent search for both individual and collective identity through a continuous introspect into their past. It concludes that liberal Afrocentricism remains the rational roadmap to understanding Roots, against the backdrop of critics that have misrepresented as well as undermined the legendary import of the novel as a definitive African American literary canon.

2025

This research traces the evolution of African American identity from slavery to freedom in American poetry. It explores images of displacement, slavery, and racism to portray the extent to which African American identity evolved throughout six main periods. It employs the concept of poetry as a witness in the reading of selected poems that served as a powerful vehicle for expressing Black Americans' journey towards equality and social justice. The paper shows that aesthetic and historical dimensions cross thematically to convey the continuous debate on slavery and the ongoing social struggle to achieve gender and racial equality. Poetry stands as a witness to the challenges and transformations that occurred in the struggle to realize a dream of passing, current, and coming generations. The paper concludes that through poetry individual narratives and personal perspectives are an archive witnessing a generationally endured past and a collectively celebrated heritage.

2025, MPEKE-NTONGA METILA ME NYODI-ALPHONSE MPEKE

2025, Disruptive Imagination and Resistance in Europe and the Americas: State - Society - Religion

This essay analyzes the complex dimensions of anti-Haitian sentiment and state policies in the Dominican Republic, addressing the central question: How does coloniality sustain anti-Haitianism across socio-cultural, politico-legal, and economic spheres? By focusing on historical and contemporary practices of racialization and economic exploitation, it reveals how Haitian migrants and their descendants are systematically marginalized. Drawing on decolonial theory, the essay demonstrates how colonial legacies and capitalist structures perpetuate racial hierarchies and injustices. Despite the essential role Haitian labor plays in the Dominican economy, it is dehumanized and exploited due to deep-rooted racial prejudices. Anti-Haitianism is not merely a sentiment or a reaction to economic pressures but a state-sanctioned practice that reinforces colonial and racial ideologies. The essay further examines how racialized language and symbolic representations depict Haitians as outsiders and scapegoats for broader social issues. It also analyzes how the denial of Blackness within the dominant construction of Dominican identity affects both Haitian migrants and Black Dominicans, perpetuating a cycle of racial discrimination and socio-economic inequality. Ultimately, it argues that a decolonial perspective is essential for understanding and dismantling the structural inequalities Haitians face in the Dominican Republic, underscoring the need for a more equitable and inclusive approach to racial and economic justice.

2025

me time, energy, insights, and more time, I thank you. My commitment to the future of your town is for life. At UNM, the Center for Regional Studies, the Office of Graduate Studies, the Graduate and Professional Student Association, and the Department of American Studies all provided funding. To Sherry Fletcher and Baxter Brown, thank you for everything-I could not have done this without your support. To Annette Rodriguez, you kept me believing. My family is my center. To my father, Dr. Wayne Shrubsall, thank you for your support, fine mind, and for listening to me with love and care. You set me on this intellectual path. To my mother, Barbara Berger, thank you for showing me the beauty in the world, for your unfailing sense of adventure and artistic soul. To my sister, Miriah Mirimanian, thank you for standing up for me. And finally, to my daughter, Emagen Schultz, thank you for being my bonny companion. You are a dazzling, beautiful, funny, smart and wonderful. You are the most extraordinary person I have ever known.

2025

2025, Revista Complutense de Historia de América, 51(1)

Este artículo estudia la relación de las izquierdas de Europa occidental con la Conferencia Tricontinental a través de la participación de algunos de sus representantes. Analiza quiénes acudieron y qué impacto tuvieron en sus organizaciones y militancias, con el objetivo de conocer cómo los debates revolucionarios, tercermundistas y antimperialistas emanados del evento cubano permearon aquellas izquierdas. La reconstrucción se realiza a través de archivos cubanos y estadounidenses, además de fuentes locales de los propios países, una documentación no contemplada en la literatura precedente.

2025, The Outlook: Journal of English Studies

This paper examines the power dynamics and cultural clashes in Doris Lessing's The Grass Is Singing, focusing on the interactions between the white protagonist, Mary Turner, and her black servants Samson and Moses, as well as a white servant Tony. Set in colonial Southern Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), the novel portrays the pervasive racism and superiority complex of the white colonialists. Mary's negative perceptions of black culture highlight the colonialists' failure to appreciate indigenous traditions, reinforcing unequal power structures. Drawing attention to theoretical frameworks such as Franz Fanon's concept of anti-racism and Ngugi wa Thiang'o's theory of decolonisation, this paper examines Moses's resistance to oppression and his quest for decolonisation as manifestations of individual agency within imperialism. Moses' journey toward decolonisation symbolises a broader struggle for psychological, cultural, and economic liberation from colonial oppression. This analysis underscores the complexities of authority and resistance, illustrating how Mary's attitudes inadvertently trigger Moses's decolonisation process. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of Lessing's exploration of colonial authority, cultural differences, and the necessity of decolonisation.

2025, Deep Science Publishing

This abstract examines the historical evolution of residential lending structures, tracing their transformation from traditional bank mortgages to securitized financial instruments. It highlights key developments, including government interventions and the rise of financial innovation, such as mortgage-backed securities, which reshaped risk distribution, credit access, and housing finance markets globally.

2025, American Communist History

was the wife of Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov, a leading KGB field officer of the 1930s and 1940s. In his long career Akhmerov served in Turkey, China, Switzerland, and the United States. He was regarded as a highly successful field intelligence officer, and a book about Akhmerov's career was used as a text at the KGB training academy, the Andropov Red Banner Institute, in the 1980s. During his first tour in the USA in the 1930s as an illegal officer (not under diplomatic cover) he met a young American woman, Helen Lowry. Lowry came to the KGB via the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) and served as a courier and assistant to the professional KGB officers, worked closely with Akhmerov, and in the late 1930s married him. She accompanied her husband to the USSR in 1939 when his tour ended and accepted Soviet citizenship. 1 During Akhmerov's second US tour as chief of the KGB illegal station in the early 1940s Helen Lowry Akhmerova worked as an active KGB agent, as well as giving birth to a daughter in 1944. She appeared in the deciphered Venona traffic numerous times under her cover names Elsa, Nelly, and Stella. 2 She returned to the USSR with her husband and daughter in 1946. Elizabeth Bentley, who supervised several large CPUSA-based networks for the KGB and who turned herself in to the FBI in 1945, dealt with both

2025, Rubikon : Journal of Transnational American Studies

The racial discrimination and oppression toward Black community in the U.S. have become the main concern in American society. Several factors make Black community live with fear and struggle to be accepted in American society. Racial discrimination is a complex phenomenon, which is the accumulation of variables within Black community’s lives. Race, class, and gender are factors that intersect with one another, resulting in continuous racial discrimination toward Black people in the U.S. Black literature explores how Black people encounter oppression and discrimination; and how they fight against them. One of Black young adult literature is entitled The Hate U Give (2017) by Angie Thomas. This novel explores the life of a high school student named Starr who lives within two atmospheres, a black neighborhood and a predominately white school. Through the protagonist’s point of view, this novel explores how the intersection of race, class, and gender are connected and creates continuous...

2025, Journal of Artistic Creation and Literary Research

The theme of fatherhood in James Baldwin's novels and essays has frequently been the subject of analysis. An examination of the same topic in the single short story collection published in his lifetime, Going to Meet the Man, sheds a new light on the topic given the disruptive and anti-closural potential of the short story cycle, as theorised by critics like Rolf Lundén. By applying theories of queer temporality to these anti-closural strategies, it is easier to understand how Baldwin subverts the role that fatherhood plays in his short story collection. Special attention is drawn to three of the stories.

2025, Political Communication

An impressive body of research shows that the framing of an issue affects citizens' attitudes, but also that some frames are more influential than others. Yet, we have surprisingly limited knowledge of the factors that affect the strength of a frame, that is, the frame's capacity to influence citizens' opinions. Therefore, this study investigates the relative strength of episodic and thematic frames to argue that our understanding of the dynamics of frame strength can be advanced through a better incorporation of citizens' emotional reactions. Based on experimental data, I demonstrate that the relative strength of episodic and thematic frames depends on the intensity of citizens' emotional reactions. When there are no or weak emotional reactions, thematic frames are stronger than episodic frames, whereas the relative strength is increasingly reversed when intense emotional reactions are inflamed in the audience. I conclude by discussing the implications of the findings.

2025, Studies in Philosophy and Education

A Response To Isabelle Bishop's Review of "Teaching the Actuality of Revolution: Aesthetics, unlearning, and the Sensations of Struggle"

2025, Mpeke-Ntonga Metila Me Nyodi-Alphonse Mpeke

2025, EAF Policy Debates

Han Kang's Nobel Prize in Literature provided a fresh literary and social awakening both for
South Korea and the international community. Her universal questions about human vulnerability
touched hearts worldwide, transcending Korean history. The massacres in Jeju and Gwangju
are not phenomena unique to Korea, with many parts of the world still healing from, or experiencing,
war and death. The anachronistic declaration of martial law on Dec. 3, 2024 by Korean
President Yoon Suk Yeol was an incomprehensible shock that stirred up dark memories and
painful wounds of state violence. However, South Korean democracy is resilient, and Korean
society continues its efforts to properly heal and bid farewell to the darkest periods of its past.
The martial law incident served as a good opportunity for many Millennials and Gen Z, both
inside and outside South Korea, who were moved by Han Kang's novels to empathize with and
learn about Korean history and democracy. The incident became an opportunity to revisit Han
Kang's works. South Korea will walk through a recovery process, creating a more vibrant and
brighter forest of trees.

2025, Urban Affairs Review

How do disasters affect voting? A series of postdisaster studies have sought to answer this question using a retrospective framework through which voters deviate from normal patterns of political support (measured by votes or attitudes) to punish or reward officials for their performance, or lack thereof. Here, we argue that the political effects of disasters can last longer than and be qualitatively different from reactions to the original disaster because postdisaster recoveries generate their own issues, to which voters may respond prospectively, and retrospectively. Local communities affected by disasters are likely sites for this effect because their citizens experience the consequences of a disaster more directly and for longer periods than do national audiences. The case of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina demonstrates this point. Where most studies of postdisaster politics use partisanship as the baseline against which to measure change, we use race because that has been ...

2025, Pacific Historical Review

2025, TK-21 LaRevue n°166

La culture, et la musique en particulier, transcendent les frontières. Les musiciens de jazz, et plus spécifiquement les musiciens de jazz latino – noirs, métis, blancs, etc. – reconnaissent et adoptent cette composante africaine dans leur art. Et les musiciens africains, à leur tour, reçoivent et recréent une musique latine dans laquelle ils retrouvent un écho de leur propre histoire.
Nous vous présentons dans cet épisode un groupe de musiciens africains dont les performances annoncent d’autres relations transatlantiques, des dialogues musicaux riches et porteurs d’avenir.

2025, James Baldwin Review

As this essay notes, James Baldwin, his words and metaphors, pervade public space at countless numbers of intersections. Lines from his plays, novels, and essays have always been an easy and handy reference for writers and artists seeking ways to ground their intentions with deeper meaning and magic. Even in a minority opinion on 22 June 2016 written by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, she cited several authors, including Baldwin, to underscore her point on the Court's abrogation of the Fourth Amendment.

2025, Bioscience Reports

The Majority of my day is spent teaching Biology 1 to ninth and tenth graders. The curriculum is titled A Human Approach. In this course we look at the 6 unifying principles that all life share in common and the characteristics that make Humans a unique form of life on Earth. Humans share additional qualities and characteristics that are not shared by any other organism in existence. An opposable thumb, dexterity, a large cerebrum, technology laws, education and extend learning, and language are just a few examples. The facts that today, in our culture, humans have an extended childhood and are cared for by their parents for a long period of time is very unique to the Human Species. This curriculum looks at culture, mating patterns, parenting, learning, and childhood, all of which are influenced by the family. This is where I feel the information and data that I have collect4ed through the seminar and my research will best fit.

2025, Monografias Antropologia & Arqueologia

As palavras costuradas a seguir tratam-se de um esforço em construir um caminho analítico imbricando a proposição de Sueli Carneiro a respeito do que nomeou como Dispositivo da Racialidade junto a repertórios teórico-metodológicos da Arqueologia a fim de tensionar a caridade enquanto um aparato que diante do sistema da branquitude é acionado na manutenção de privilégios. Desta maneira, o percurso a ser discorrido volta-se para os arranjos discursivo-materiais que produziriam esta dinâmica, com enfoque especial para os contextos ligados à noção de Assistência ao Menor.

2025, none

I want to start with a confession. I am suffering a bit of imposter syndrome right now, given the topic of Juneteenth. I don't identify as African American and so speak from a relative distance about the legacies of American slavery that make Juneteenth important. In my defense I claim that our country's first professions of diversity, equity, and inclusion are not merely theories or much less un-American; and learning about Juneteenth makes me even more confident in that belief. 1 With all that said, there is or should be a duality to marking Juneteenth Day. It's a day inviting cultural commemoration among African Americans, and what we might call thoughtful celebration among all Americans. Originally those Americans who gained freedom from enslavement, called in the language of Reconstruction the freedpeople, called Juneteenth the Jubilee, the Bible's term in the book of Leviticus for the Hebrews' practice of fifty-year cycles of slave emancipation and debt forgiveness.

2025, Organization

Drawing on the poetic work of Audre Lorde on anger and inspired by recent expressions of collective anger against the many regimes of inequality and injustice in the neoliberal business school, this essay aims to delineate the contours of a reinvented minoritarian critique that emerges through the undercommons, a fugitive, non-reformist collective mode of relating to this oppressive institution. I first discuss the concept of Lordean rage, a collective and transformative form of anger at intersecting social injustices, and I reflect on its role as an affective self-defense for those in oppositional presence to the business school. I then discuss how through the undercommons, we can think differently about how we relate to the institution, and how Lordean rage manifests an uncompromising and generative presence-in-anger for those who want to exist in dignity within and against the business school. This essay aspires to reinvigorate spaces of critique in MOS with a stronger poetic, inventive, and oppositional spirit nourished by a capacious collective rage at the neoliberal business school and its multiple regimes of injustice.

2025, Maybe Annals, maybe not.

Its in the paper

2025, Mpeke-Ntonga Metila Me Nyodi-Alphonse Mpeke

We term it Social Dissonant Isolation (SDI)-a covert pattern of exclusion in which an employee is formally present yet socially erased. SDI sits at the intersection of workplace ostracism (Williams 2007), micro-aggressions (Sue 2010) and in-group bias (Hogg 2001), but its deepest logic, for Africans in white-majority settings, is captured by the ECAAD/CEADA* framework: the Existential Condition of Africans and Descendants of Africa in the world (Mpeke-Ntonga 2024).

2025, Sociology of race & ethnicity

2025, British Journal of Sociology

I am honoured to present the 2016 British Journal of Sociology Annual Lecture at the London School of Economics. My lecture is based on ideas derived from my new book, The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology. In this essay I make three arguments. First, W.E.B. Du Bois and his Atlanta School of Sociology pioneered scientific sociology in the United States. Second, Du Bois pioneered a public sociology that creatively combined sociology and activism. Finally, Du Bois pioneered a politically engaged social science relevant for contemporary political struggles including the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement.

2025, Acta Theologica

This article seeks to address the following question: To what extent can we draw a parallel between the methodology of African women’s theology and that of African indigenous research? It sets out on the premise that indigenous methodologies strive towards research authenticity, from an insider perspective, as opposed to an outsider’s overview. Understanding the concept of relationality in the indigenous methods is critically important as we comparatively engage African women’s theology. Does the latter embrace an all-inclusive approach that encompasses axiology (aesthetics and ethics), epistemology (knowledge and truth), political philosophy (the state and government), logic (argumentation and reason), and metaphysics (reality and being), as in the former? In vouching for a cosmological interconnectedness, women theologians have approached their discourses from a broad spectrum that seeks to preserve and nurture a two-winged society of men and women. In using a theo-analytical engagement, this article reviews relevant literature, in order to understand its concern.

2025, The Heritage Foundation

Identity politics is primarily an outgrowth of the black nationalist, Black Power, and women's liberation movements and has since come to dominate the public square. It combines a focus on race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other identitarian categories with a politics of victimization. The cornerstone of the identitarian worldview is the claim that America, contrary to its egalitarian professions of faith, is at its core a supremacist regime that oppresses certain groups. Ultimately, identity politics should be rejected not because it demands justice for those who have been unjustly treated, but because it poses a threat to republican self-government by corroding patriotic ties, fostering hatred, promoting cultural separatism, and demanding special treatment rather than equality under the law.

2025, Up from Conservatism: Revitalizing the Right after a Generation of Decay

For all the profound disagreements between the conservative establishment and those of us on the emerging new Right, we broadly agree on what to do about the most contentious issue in America: race-by which we mean, as everyone else does, black people. We both reject invidious discrimination (including so-called "affirmative action") and believe desirable positions should generally be awarded on the basis of merit and competence. We both expect the government to secure the rights of all Americans equally, regardless of race. And, of course, we both think that our fellow black citizens should be treated with courtesy in everyday life (the days in which a grown man was called "boy"-or worse-are, in any case, long gone). Equal rights under equal laws with no special treatment should be the bedrock of American justice. Nothing less, nothing more-come what may of life outcomes. That last qualifier is the real holdup. Conservatives claim to believe in colorblindness but they in truth do not have the stomach to accept the outcomes it produces. They tirelessly quote that one line from the "I Have a Dream" speech but feel uneasy when they end up without enough people of a particular skin color after having judged people by the content of their character.

2025

The Christian Church has been the indisputable epicenter of cultural development in the African-American community from the early days of slavery to the present. Lincoln discusses this institution as a source of social and intellectual formation, stating: The Black Church has no challenger as the cultural womb of the black community. Not only did it give birth to new institutions such as schools, banks, insurance companies, and low income housing, it also provided an academy and an area for political activities, and it nurtured young talent for musical, dramatic, and artistic development. 1

2025, Mpeke-Ntonga Metila Me Nyodi

Cet article analyse la montée des nationalismes toxiques aussi bien en Afrique continentale que dans les Territoires Africains d'Outre-Océans (TAOOs) à travers le prisme de la Coafrwologie-science panafricaine de la restauration de l'ordre universel-et du cadre CEADA/ECAAD. Alors que la Renaissance africaine globale exige une solidarité transnationale, l'essor de xénophobies, d'ethno-chauvinismes et de micro-nationalismes diasporiques menace d'enrayer l'unité nécessaire à la souveraineté collective. Nous identifions les mécanismes psychospirituels, politiques et épistémiques qui alimentent ces dérives et proposons une matrice de transmutation Coafrwologique.

2025

Nous vivons une époque critique-une époque qui exige une clarté totale de l'esprit, une force de volonté inébranlable et une unité de vision chez tous les Africains et descendants d'Afrique à travers le monde. Notre CEADA/ECAAD-Condition Existentielle des Africains et des Descendants Africains-doit désormais devenir la priorité absolue de chaque leader, penseur, activiste, artiste, entrepreneur, éducateur et ancien de nos communautés.

2025, Mpeke-Ntonga Metila Me Nyodi-Alphonse Mpeke

This reflection contends that much of the mental dysfunctionality prevalent in African communities originates from the deep historical imposition of Arab and Western religious systems. These religious colonisations disrupted African cosmologies, generated prolonged cognitive dissonance, and gradually led to the formation of narcissistic personality structures and fragmented identities. The analysis is framed through an Afrocentric and Coafrwological perspective, integrating insights from decolonial theory, transpersonal psychology, and African philosophy. Healing requires a re-rooting of African minds in Indigenous spiritual, cultural, and epistemic orders.

2025, Mpeke-Ntonga Metila Me Nyodi-Alphonse Mpeke

S'appuyant sur la Coafrwologie-nouvelle science panafricaine de la restauration de l'ordre, de l'équilibre et de la liberté-cet article soutient que la forte prévalence des psychoses et des structures de personnalité narcissique dans les populations africaines doit être comprise comme l'expression d'une fracture ontologique provoquée par des siècles d'imposition religieuse arabo-islamique et euro-chrétienne. Ces cosmologies importées ont déplacé les systèmes endogènes, engendrant une dissonance cognitive profonde (Festinger, 1957) et une épistémicide (Santos, 2014). Au fil des générations, cette fracture a suscité des adaptations narcissiques défensives (Kohut, 1971) et, dans les cas extrêmes, un effondrement psychotique (Bhugra & Bhui, 2001). Ancrée dans le cadre CEADA (Mpékè-Ntonga, 2024), l'étude propose un programme réparateur fondé sur la mémoire ancestrale, l'éthique Ubuntu-Kama et une psychothérapie afro-centrée destinée à restaurer l'équilibre psychique et communautaire

2025, Mpeke-Ntonga Metila Me Nyodi-Alphonse Mpeke

2025, Liberation News

Jasmine Tinuoye | Liberation News Silicon Valley isn't wrestling with its conscience. It's commodifying its guilt. While Big Tech props up "responsible AI" boards and posts DEI statements after harm is already done, Christian Ortiz did... more

2025

Dance, as a form of human expression, brings with it a rich history dating back to the most ancient times. Although it is often framed as art, its versatility goes further, being used not only for artistic purposes but also as a means of communication between human beings and, in some cultures, as a form of connection with deities. In this way, dance not only enriches the artistic sphere, but also intertwines with the human experience, becoming intrinsic to our being and existing in the world.