# data[].attributes.headline
Black Wake and Debt: How Black American Literature deals with and reflects Trauma.

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Wake and Debt: How Black American Literature deals with and reflects Trauma.

# data[].attributes.body
I am deeply interested in exploring how debt is reflected in Black American Literature. Debt as i refer to it is trauma from slavery. I want to systematically explore this debt into two forms. The first is debt that is spiritual in nature. I want to explore how rememory is used to re-carve experiences and make sense of the past. I want to show how magical realism along with spirituality is used to center past experience that are unresolved. This includes the house and the ghost. The other-side I want to explore from debt is the lingering impacts of slavery, segregation, discrimination, and racism on the socio-economic well being of black Americans. How that is expressed in the WAKE of the experience. In the end I want to show how both of these experiences come together to shape a significant part of the Black literary tradition we have explore in class. I have attached my main secondary source that describes debt as trauma. I will slowly add other secondary sources that further back my claims. Thank you.

# data[].attributes.body
Cecelia Hampton

I want to explore the role of spirituality in Black womanhood, especially Black motherhood, and its effects on self identity in contemporary literature. I want to understand how spirituality and religion affects the identity of Black women and to unpack the relationship between spirituality and Black feminism.

Three texts that I want to use are Sing, Unburied, Sing, because of the role of spirituality and the living/unliving as well as family relationships and motherhood, The Color Purple, for its religious and feminist concepts, and Beloved, for the role of motherhood and the relationship between the living/unliving. Additionally, I have found some articles on JSTOR that connect, such as Patton and McClure's “Strength in the Spirit: A Qualitative Examination of African American College Women and the Role of Spirituality during College,” which uses a Black feminist framework to study how Black women navigate college life with spirituality. I found another article by Chaney called “The Character of Womanhood: How African American Women’s Perceptions of Womanhood Influence Marriage and Motherhood,” which uses a Black feminist framework to analyze how Black women perceive womanhood, and how this influences Black womanhood and motherhood.

Some questions I will use to guide my research are: How does spirituality affect self identity for Black women? How does the role of the living/nonliving affect spirituality, and therefore have an impact on Black motherhood? What is the relationship between spirituality and Black feminism?

For my presentation, I am leaning towards writing a conference style paper, but I want to further explore the idea of a digital exhibit because I also think that could be cool and I have never made one before.

# data[].attributes.body
Natalie Miller:

I plan to further research the idea of black women identity in the times of slavery, and how it can be taken/lost. I also want to talk about the mindset and decisions that are made under these kind of hardships.

Three texts that I will potentially reference in my paper are "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs, and "Venus" by Suzan Lori Parks. I also plan on using articles I have found through JSTOR titled, "Introduction: Women, Slavery, and Historical Research" by Brenda E. Stevenson as well as "Mad Enough to Kill: Enslaved Women, Murder, and Southern Courts" by Wilma King. These both provide further background on decisions Black women had to face to find their sense of self.

As of now I plan on forming my idea and thoughts through a 7-10 page conference paper. I might do a timeline and Story Map of my findings but I have to do further digging to figure out which would be best for my topic.

# data[].attributes.headline
Spectres of Slavery - Carceral Stories and Kinship

# data[].attributes.subject
Spectres of Slavery - Carceral Stories and Kinship

# data[].attributes.body
Mia DelRosso:

I intend to close read passages from Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing that feature powerful storytelling from one character to another. I'd like to focus on the triangular relationship between Jojo, Pop, and Richie.

I may extend my analysis, comparing Parchman's psychological influence to Paul D's trauma and history told in Beloved by Toni Morrison.

I find the Black literary tradition of spectral storytelling compelling in the way it welds bonds of kinship throughout generations (across the living family and their ancestors), and how it shapes those bonds to be strong, or weakens them.

"Rememory" enlivens both of these tales of shared grief and pain and connects closely to experiences of the phantasmagorical. I believe Conjure/Hoodoo, rememory and storytelling to be definitive of the nature of time and community identity.

I may research Black scholarship on the penal system and how it conjures the specter of chattel slavery.

(Note: there is a strong possibility through initial stages of researching and writing that I switch tracks and explore the meaning and act of motherhood between Sethe and Leonie.)

# data[].attributes.body
Tommy Mullane:

For my final project, I am interested in further exploring how black women are depicted in household roles in black literature. By researching this, I hope to begin a conversation on the intersectionality of gender/racial stereotypes and motherhood, and how these roles play out in black female literature.

By researching this idea, I hope to re-engage with texts like The Color Purple, A Raisin in the Sun, and Beloved. I think all three of these texts spend a significant amount of time dealing with motherhood in the home. Upon beginning my research, I would like to also investigate other texts and expand the scope of my work. I would like to research film as a potential medium for studying this intersectionality, and how written text is reflected on the screen.

I think it would be really engaging to do a digital exhibit. By using this as a form of presentation, I can include links to clips from films, as well as pages from some of the texts we have read in class.

# data[].attributes.headline
Mules and Animal Imagery in Black Literature

# data[].attributes.subject
Mules and Animal Imagery in Black Literature

# data[].attributes.body
Maggie Farrell

For my final project, I am interested in animal imagery in Black literature, specifically, the use of the mule to describe Black women. I would use this topic as a starting point to talk about the sexualization, violence, and stereotyping specific to black women.

I would refer back to Their Eyes Were Watching God, Venus, and The Color Purple and close-read certain parts of each text to help further understand the intersectionality between labor and sexual abuse, and how these are taught generationally. In addition to these, I would reference the use of animal imagery in Sing, Unburied, Sing and figure out how that may relate to Black history.

In terms of supplementary texts, I would use “African Americans, Mules, and the Southern Mindscape, 1850-1950” by George B. Ellenburg and “From Mules to Muliebrity: Speech and Silence in ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’” by Julie A Haurykiewicz to gain a deeper knowledge on the intricacies of the usage of the word.

I think this would most likely be in the form of a conference-style paper, and hopefully be able to research more of the modern use of animal imagery. If this does not pan out as I plan, then I would also be interested in writing about Black mental health and how this affects narration.

# data[].attributes.body
Ashawna Marshall:

As the final project approaches i'll like to look into hair as my the main topic of my research. I'll like to look into the symbolism behind hair in African American culture? What's the conflict/controversy about black hair? As well as where it's rooted from?

This became my topic of interest because of the article I read early this semester for the critical response of "Their Eyes Were Watching God." The article title is, "Why don't he Like My Hair?": Constructing African-American Standards of Beauty in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes were Watching God." Which is one of the articles I'll like to further study to address my potential research question.

Another source that I can use is Tik Tok and the news outlets. I've seen in multiple videos, where kids were told they can't play sports because of their hairstyle, the length of their hair and accessories(beads). As well as a boy getting suspended from school because he had locs inside of his head. This is a reoccurring issue within the black community; the policing of hair: when, where and how you should wear it.

https://daily.jstor.org/how-natural-black-hair-at-work-became-a-civil-rights-issue/

"How natural black hair at work became a civil rights issue"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 2010, Chastity Jones eagerly accepted a job offer from Catastrophe Management Solutions as a customer service representative. The offer, however, came with one caveat-she had to cut off her locs. Jones refused, and the company rescinded its job offer. The company's hiring manager reportedly told Jones, "They tend to get messy." The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a suit on Jones's behalf in 2013 and lost. In 2016, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court's ruling and dismissed the case.

Jones' case is not unique. Cases filed by black workers alleging discrimination against their natural hair in the workplace have filled courthouses for more than forty years, yielding mixed results. These judicial rulings, intertwined with changing social and cultural mores, have created a contentious and uncertain legal situation, with courts and other governmental entities ruling on both sides of the debate.

How Did We Get Here?

Anti-black hair sentiment on U.S. soil has existed for centuries. In the 1700s, enslaved women who worked in the fields usually covered their hair in head-rags due to the harsh demands of their work. Enslaved Africans who worked in the "big house," however, sometimes mimicked the hairstyles of their enslavers, either by wearing wigs that had become popular during that era or shaping their kinky hair to emulate them. In cities like New Orleans, however, where free Creole women of color donned elaborate hairstyles that displayed their kinks and coils with an air of regality, the city implemented laws- the Tignon Laws -that required these women to wear a tignon (scarf or handkerchief) over their hair to signify that they were members of the slave class, regardless of whether they were free or enslaved.

The end of the 19th century saw the invention of the hair-straightening comb, which would be used to "tame" black hair. Madam C.J. Walker, a black woman, popularized the comb, and "by the mid-1920s, straight hair had become the preferred texture to signal middle class status." As a result, Walker became the first female African American millionaire. Although some historians have lauded Walker's business acumen, others have chided her for perpetuating the idea that straight hair leads to social and economic advancement. For better or worse, she offered black women an avenue for increased societal acceptance in an era when minstrel songs mocked the hair texture of African Americans, " comparing it to wool and often describing it as nappy."

"Don't remove the kinks from your hair! Remove them from your brain!"

The first wave of the natural hair movement emerged during the tumultuous 1960s. The "Black Is Beautiful" movement assured black women and men that their skin, facial features, and natural hair were admirable-as is. The activist Marcus Garvey encouraged black women to embrace their natural kinks, arguing that copying white eurocentric standards of beauty denigrated the beauty of black women: " Don't remove the kinks from your hair! Remove them from your brain! "

The activist Angela Davis sported an afro as a sign of black power and rebellion against white American beauty standards. Wearing an afro became a weapon in the fight for racial equality, as well as a public declaration of self-love and solidarity within the black community. A 1972 study of black teens living in St. Louis revealed that 90 percent of young men and 40 percent of young women in the city sported their natural kinks, an uptick from the 50s and 60s. Although small in scope, this study captured the larger national trend.

Whether rocking afros or pressed hair, black protesters demanded the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which " ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination." The Act also created the EEOC, which operates " as the lead enforcement agency in the area of workplace discrimination." When the EEOC was founded fifty-five years ago, the federal government's primary concern was that black people be granted equal access to public workplaces. It didn't foresee that black hair would need equal access as well.

Meanwhile, public protests and pop culture pushed the Black Is Beautiful and civil rights movements forward. Released in 1968, James Brown's "Say It Loud!" became a rallying anthem that encouraged black folks to embrace their blackness and fight against unequal treatment:

Say it loud! I'm black and I'm proud
Say it louder! I'm black and I'm proud
Some people say we got a lot of malice, some say it's a lotta nerve
But I say we won't quit movin' until we get what we deserve

The first natural hair discrimination cases wouldn't appear until the next decade. In the 1976 case of Jenkins v. Blue Cross Mutual Hospital Insurance, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a race discrimination lawsuit against an employer for bias against afros. The appeals court agreed that workers were entitled to wear afros under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

While afros were technically allowed in workplaces, the social pressure to emulate eurocentric hair permeated American society, impacting black women's hair grooming decisions. In "Hey Girl, Am I More Than My Hair?," the communications scholar Tracey Owens Patton wrote that "the progressive changes made during the Black Power movement eroded as assimilation became more dominant in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s."

The 1980s and 1990s ushered in more black women sporting pressed and permed hair, thanks to prevalent hair-care ads on TV and in magazines that encouraged black women to alter the texture of their hair. However, this time period also witnessed the popularization of styles like braids and cornrows. Images of black women celebrities showcasing braids-like Janet Jackson in Poetic Justice -encouraged black women to braid their tresses. Wearing these styles came with a price, as they created a legal firestorm. In 1981, a black woman took American Airlines to court because the company demanded she not wear her hair in braids. The court sided with the airline, stating that braids were not an immutable racial characteristic-unlike the afro. Less than a decade later, the Hyatt Regency used this ruling to make employee Cheryl Tatum resign after she refused to take out the cornrows she wore to work. The American Airlines ruling established the standing legal precedent.

Finally, the 2000s welcomed the second wave of the natural hair movement. Spurred by films and the advent of social media, the movement fueled a cultural shift that has caused legions of black women to abandon their perms and pressing combs. Director Regina Kimbell's My Nappy Roots: A Journey Through Black Hair-itage traced the history and politics around natural black hair in the U.S., thus raising consciousness in the African American community. This was one year before comedian Chris Rock would release Good Hair, a similarly themed documentary that focused on the economics of black women buying weaves and perming their hair. One of the most famous lines of the film was delivered by comedian Paul Mooney, who said, " If your hair is relaxed, they are relaxed. If your hair is nappy, they are not happy."

While both films raised social consciousness, prompting many black women to ditch their pressing combs, perms, and weaves, YouTube and other social media platforms empowered these women to act on their new awareness. YouTube and natural hair blogs allowed black women to discuss their hair-care journeys, share hair tutorials, and connect with other women-many of whom were learning to care for their natural hair for the first time. In " YouTube Communities and the Promotion of Natural Hair Acceptance Among Black Women," Cameron Jackson wrote that the social media platform not only enabled newly minted naturalistas to "disseminate information about natural hair" but also caused "a shift in the cultural understanding of natural hair."

Today, natural hair communities abound on YouTube and Instagram. With one million subscribers, Naptural85 is an acclaimed natural hair guru, while Instagram shows 21.8 million "natural hair" posts. These numbers suggest that natural hair is officially "in." So "in" that natural hair clip-ins are now available, offering buyers an assortment of "natural" kinks and curls. Hair product sales stats reflect this trend. According to the global research firm Mintel, spending on perm relaxers fell 30.8 percent between 2011 and 2016. Estimates suggest that by 2020, relaxers will become the smallest segment of the market.

Preferring natural crowns isn't a passing fad, writes Kamina Wilkerson in " The Natural Hair Movement:" "It signifies an attempt at a healthier lifestyle, a more authentic existence and a redefinition of the meaning of beauty." According to Wilkerson, it's also "revolutionary as a self-created, self-perpetuating female-led movement." The proliferation of natural hair expos and festivals exemplifies this reality. The leaders of this revolution are natural hair evangelists who preach the good news of organic hair products to their loyal followers and the newly converted-while flaunting fierce manes, the same hairstyles worn in countries in Africa in the seventeenth century.

As natural hair care practices have gained increased acceptance in mainstream society, many corporations- and the U.S. government-have welcomed natural styles, even as courts decided they didn't have to. Last year, for example, the U.S. Navy changed its grooming policy to include braided styles and locs, which follows a similar decision by the Army in 2017.

However, the debate about what's professional, presentable, and thus acceptable looms, affecting black children as well. In 2017, a preparatory academy in Montverde, Florida, asked a black teenage girl to change her natural hair because it violated the school's dress code; and in 2018, a middle-school student in Gretna, Louisiana was removed from school due to her braided extensions.

Undeterred, artists continue to propel the culture forward. In 2018, Netflix turned Trisha R. Thomas's Nappily Ever After book series into a film, while Gillian Scott-Ward's Back to Natural documentary (which hit the festival circuit in 2017) influenced the NYC Commission's release of its groundbreaking guidelines.

Where Are We at Now?

In 2006, the EEOC issued its Compliance Manual on Race and Color Discrimination, which details guidelines around what constitutes discrimination based on physical characteristics in the workplace. The manual protects against "employment discrimination based on a person's physical characteristics associated with race, such as a person's color, hair, facial features, height and weight." The manual states that employers can impose neatness and grooming standards, as long as racial differences are taken into account and the rules are applied equally across racial lines. Employers cannot discriminate against an employee wearing an afro, for example, because that is black hair in its natural state. While employers might be able to request that an afro be groomed, they cannot demand that it not be worn at all. Neither can they apply hairstyle rules more stringently to hairstyles worn by blacks.

At the center of the current debate around natural hairstyles like locs is whether the style is a racial characteristic protected by the law.

The EEOC's guidelines, however clear, still leave room for judicial interpretation, with the EEOC and federal courts disagreeing. At the center of the current debate around natural hairstyles like locs is whether the style is a racial characteristic protected by the law.

In Jones' case, the Eleventh Circuit held that the employer did not discriminate against Jones based on race because the locs hairstyle is a "mutable-or changeable-characteristic." The EEOC, however, maintained that race is a social construct that isn't strictly limited to immutable characteristics. The Commission insists that race can also include "cultural characteristics related to race or ethnicity," including grooming practices. The circuit court disagreed, ruling that although locs are traditionally associated with people of African descent, the employer did not engage in any race-based disparate treatment.

Although the EEOC opted not to take the case to the Supreme Court and the NAACP's subsequent request that the court hear the case was rejected, other government entities have drawn more stringent legal lines in the sand. In early 2019, the New York City Commission on Human Rights declared its commitment to protect residents' legal right to wear their hair in locs, afros, braids, and other culturally specific styles, granting the city's residents more protection than the federal government provides. The Commission argues that natural hair-and by extension any natural hairstyle-is inextricably tied to race and thus protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which "prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin."

The Commission wrote: "Bans or restrictions on natural hair or hairstyles associated with black people are often rooted in white standards of appearance and perpetuate racist stereotypes that black hairstyles are unprofessional. Such policies exacerbate anti-black bias in employment, at school, while playing sports, and in other areas of daily living." The Commission's statement mirrored the EEOC's position and implemented on the local level what the EEOC hopes to implement on a federal level.

Two months after NYC released its guidelines, the California legislature passed a bill that would ban discrimination against natural black hairstyles in the workplace. The bill awaits the Governor's signature. If it's approved, California would become the first state to ban discrimination against all natural hairstyles in the workplace.

Where Do We Go from Here?

While NYC residents can don any natural hairstyle they want in public schools and in workplaces, and California residents may soon join them, many African Americans aren't afforded that same legal protection. Black citizens like Chastity Jones are still being denied jobs. Unless the Supreme Court reverses the Eleventh Circuit's ruling, this judicial and legislative free-for-all will continue. Caught in the crosshairs, many African Americans will be forced to choose between embracing their identities and economic advancement.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Natural Black Hair at Work Became a Civil Rights Issue - JSTOR Daily

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On the 55th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, U.S. courts are still divided about African Americans' right to wear their natural hair in the workplace.

# data[].attributes.headline
Briyani Mercedes: The depictions of love and marriage in Black Women's writing 

# data[].attributes.subject
Briyani Mercedes: The depictions of love and marriage in Black Women's writing 

# data[].attributes.body
In my final project, I am interested in analyzing how love and marriage are depicted in black women's writing. In examining this topic I hope to understand better the ways in which marriage and love become an oppressive space for black women, are tied to black women's sexuality, and how marriage and love are both desired but unattainable.

I hope to use the texts Venus and their eyes were watching god (I am also open to other suggestions of texts we've read in class to use). Additionally, I will use the texts Black marriage through the prism of gender and race (http://www.jstor.com/stable/24572942), Unholy Matrimony: Marriage And Identity In Twentieth Century African-American Women's Fiction (http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-2595), the coupling convention: sex ,text, and tradition in Black womens fiction (https://www.jstor.org/stable/468086).

I think the books we have read in class in conjunction with these outside texts I have found in my initial search provide an in-depth understanding of the complex dynamics and legacies attached to marriage, the quest for love, and the abusive or unrequited nature of true love for female characters depicted in black women's writing

I think that this would best be presented in the form of a 7-10 page paper which I will most likely do but I still want to meet with people from the library to throw around ideas of a more creative way to digitally do this project.

# data[].attributes.headline
Janelle Monáe's Age of Pleasure: Black Queer Love and Liberation

# data[].attributes.subject
Janelle Monáe's Age of Pleasure: Black Queer Love and Liberation

# data[].attributes.body
Eve Galanis

I want to examine Janelle Monáe's latest album, "The Age of Pleasure" as a work of art that imagines a sonically healing space and a world that centers Black queer joy as a form collective liberation.

Three possible texts that I want to use to analyze are: Audre Lorde's, "Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic As Power," bell hooks' All About Love, and Daphne Brooks' Liner Notes for Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound. I also really enjoy Jennifer Nash's analysis of love politics so that may also be a source I incorporate as a theoretical framework.

I mostly imagine this as a conventional essay, but I will publish it to my website in the form of a blog post so in a way, it's sort of a hybrid of the two presentation format styles.

Abstract: Janelle Monáe is lauded for their Afrofuturist lyrics that speak truth to power;  questioning political systems and ways of being, all layered under a catchy, danceable beat. In their most recent album, The Age of Pleasure, she departs from her ArchAndroid persona to create a world of pure joy and ecstasy. Monáe redefines post-2020 Pan-African sound by incorporating hip-hop, Afrobeat, reggae and Motown into their body of work and by doing so, she captures community and its sonic dimensions. Featuring Black matriarchs like Sister Nancy and Grace Jones and collaborating with Seun Kuti, the son of Nigerian revolutionary Fela Kuti, The Age of Pleasure is not only unapologetically Black and queer, it imagines what life would be like without white heteronormative patriarchy. This research positions Monáe’s latest work alongside Black feminist scholars who have imagined the possibilities of a world free from oppressive power structures and Black femme erotic creativity as a tool for transformation. Incorporating the writings of Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Jennifer Nash into this analysis will illuminate the ways in which Monáe’s Age of Pleasure is part of a larger Black queer feminist philosophy of radical love and acceptance as a method of resistance. It works against a system designed to categorize and control bodies and the ways people express love. Instead, Monáe imagines and creates for her listener, a more fluid, thriving world and asserts there is another way of being.

Annotated Bibliography:

Audre Lorde. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” reprinted in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. (Pennsylvania: Crossing Press,1984).

One of the most impactful Black women writers to have ever lived, Audre Lorde’s writings contextualizes Black queer feminism into an intellectual framework of analysis. In this essay, Lorde explores the uses of the erotic as a form of power and a source for intellectual information. Lorde’s definition of the erotic exists in a realm that is both deeply spiritual and feminine and by its very existence is dangerous to the white male patriarchal status quo. Lorde examines the

etymology of erotic and draws connections to a feminist understanding of society and knowledge production. While there are so many Black queer theoretical frameworks that can be applied to Age of Pleasure, I believe Lorde’s analysis of the erotic is essential to understanding Monáe's intentions with the album. Applying Lorde’s interpretation of uses of the erotic helps to define Black queer excellence that lives in The Age of Pleasure.

bell hooks. All About Love: New Visions. (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).

While I originally was gravitated to this book for my own personal use, I believe bell hooks’ All About Love is another secondary source that allows the listener of Janelle Monáe’s album to realize the radical love politics that lives in The Age of Pleasure. hooks reflects on her own relationship with love and in doing so, outlines the process of self acceptance and society’s analysis of love. While listening to interviews of Monáe describing her process for writing the album,

there were striking similarities to hooks’ interpretation of using love as a way of reimagining our communities and systems. Incorporating hooks into this analysis of Monáe’s album will further contextualize this album within a larger tradition of Black feminist scholarship.

Dan Hassler-Forest. Boni, Marta (ed.) “The Politics of World Building Heteroglossia in Janelle Monáe’s Afrofuturist WondaLand.” in World Building. Transmedia, Fans, Industries. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017).

This essay examines political world building found in media, and the ways in which fantasy genres can reflect political visions. This research traces 1970s Afrofuturism as well as Janelle Monáe’s reinvigoration of this cultural movement

in the 21st century. Through her lyrics and music, videos and stage performances, Monáe adopts the cultural logic of world building. Hassler-Forest argues Janelle Monáe’s strength as an artist to challenge white traditions of

world-building, but also asserts her use of neoliberalism to convey her message. This research raises questions about Monáe’s work as a true example of transgressive art so this secondary source will be vital in analyzing her most

recent album. Additionally, from a historiographical perspective, this essay is important to incorporate into my research to document what other scholars have

said about her previous works.

Daphne A. Brooks. Liner Notes For The Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black

Feminist Sound. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021). Daphne Brooks’ monograph traces an entire century of Black women’s music archives and their intellectual inspirations; weaving together sonic pioneers such as Zora Neale Hurston and perspectives on Black queer feminist critique. Brooks explores the gendered and racial politics associated with blues and rock and roll sound. She asserts Black women’s music is part of a larger radical intellectual movement and includes Janelle Monáe in this framework. While I was familiar with Brooks’ argument from previous music historians, Liner Notes For The Revolution illuminated how Monáe’s work fit neatly within a larger body of Black queer feminist music tradition and how Afrofuturism and speculative fiction can empower listeners to believe another way of being is possible. Identifying Monáe’s work as part of an ancestral tradition while being uniquely their own, this source will be valuable to support my analysis of Monáe’s latest album, The Age of Pleasure.

Janelle Monáe. The Age of Pleasure. Wondaland Bad Boy Atlantic Records. 2023. Audio Recording.

Janelle Monáe’s album, Age of Pleasure, will be my primary source for this research project. In this departure from her usual Afrofuturist, speculative fiction style, Monáe places pleasure in the here and now; building a bridge between

possible futures and what is within our reach. I will analyze the album and place it within a larger analysis of Black queer joy as a form of subversion and resistance. Incorporating feminist theorists such as Audre Lorde and early Black

musicians like Gladys Bentley, I will explore Monáe’s 2023 album as a pan-African love note and a sonic tool for self-determination.

# data[].attributes.body
I want to explore the idea of citizenship through the experiences of Black women in the late 19th century.

The three texts I would like to explore are Ida B. Well's Crusade for Justice, report of the joint select committee to inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrection states, and Hannah Rosen Terror in the Heart of Freedom.

I imagine this as an essay that will explore the continued sexual exploitation of Black bodies during Jim Crow and the resistance to both that and gendered nature of citizenship.

# data[].attributes.body
Black women writers deliver narratives that provide great insight into the traditionally silenced experiences of Black women in America. This paper seeks to explore and analyze the ways in which love and marriage tropes are depicted and utilized in Black women’s writing, focusing on the works Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and Venus by Suzan-Lori Parks. In the works I have chosen to study marriage and love are both highlighted as something that is desired but ultimately unattainable. I aim to examine the ways in which Black women’s literature employs Marriage as a device to further explore the intersection of blackness, womanhood, and the legacy of slavery within romantic relationships. The depictions of marriage provided by Hurston, Walker, and Parks gives an in-depth understanding of the complex dynamics and legacies within Black marriage; marriage and becoming cites of oppression, violence, sexual repression, sexualization, as well as a space in which liberation can be found within the loneness and isolation of marriage/a partnership. In the first part of this paper, I will discuss the ways in which the legacy of slavery has impacted and informed the desire for Marriage as well as the oppression faced by Black women in marriage. In introducing this background I will highlight the ways in which the abuse, lack of security, and male-female power dynamics produce a framework to understand better both the desirability of love/marriage as well as the ways in which “love” is ultimately unattainable. For the remainder of my paper, I will use scholarly articles, which provide further evidence and frameworks to structure my discussion, in conjunction with textual evidence from Hurston, Walker, and Parks' literary works to engage with the paradox of sexualization and sexual repression, oppression, and the pathways to liberation/self-love that are outlined within the depiction of marriage/love for Black women in Black women’s fiction.

Annotation of two sources:

Johnson, Kecia R., and Karyn Loscocco. “Black Marriage Through the Prism of Gender, Race, and Class.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 46, no. 2, 2015, pp. 142–71. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24572942. Accessed 7 Nov. 2023.

This text provides a in-depth analysis of the ways which the intersectionality of gender and race create a unique experience and challenge within marriage for Black women. This text provides me insights into some of the dynamics in the marriage space; for example, the way in which the texts claims that Black women are burdened with the responsibility of raising up/supporting Black men at their own expense, which speaks to one aspect of the oppression depicted within Black marriage that I wish to examine. This text also speaks to the notion of a white marriage model and differences between marriage for White women vs. Black women; this provides an interesting framework for me to implement within my paper in which I can discuss the ways in which the legacies of slavery and the cultural notion of marriage inform the marital expectations/experience for Black Women.

McCray, A. L. Unholy Matrimony: Marriage And Identity In Twentieth Century African-American Women's Fiction. no date. Florida State University, 2011.

This text aims to illustrate the way in which the depictions of marriage in Black women’s literature has evolved over time. This text provides me with four more works by Black women writers that engage with the ideas of sexual repression, marriage being desirable as a means of security/stability, and domestic violence that I wish to explore in my paper. This text also provides me with a historical framework that speaks to the ways in which the cultural memory of slavery creates a parallel in which marriage becomes a cite for the re-enslavement of Black women. Furthermore, this text provides me with new insights on my topic as well as strategies that I can use to develop/explain concepts in my paper via the lens of feminist and social/political frameworks utilized by the author.

# data[].attributes.body
Final Paper Proposal

I want to explore the idea of citizenship through the experiences of Black women in the late 19th century. At a time when the nation was supposed to be ridding the nation of the racial citizenship, with the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, citizenship was fully gendered. Only men held citizenship and thus the oppression of Black women was designed to continue even during Reconstruction. The primary sources I want to use that will examine these questions is Ida B. Wells Crusade for Justice and report of the joint select committee to inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrection states. The secondary sources are Kristen Foster’s “‘We Are Men!’: Frederick Douglass and the Fault Lines of Gendered Citizenship.” and Hannah Rosen Terror in the Heart of Freedom.

Wells Crusade for Justice is just a valuable source for understanding the problems that Black female political leaders faced during Jim Crow. Her insights into not just the racial issues of the time but the intersections of race and gender are what I really want to focus on during this project. The Report of the joint select committee to inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrection states this was a Congressional committee that investigated White supremacist actions throughout the former Confederacy. There are hundreds of pages from this report of witnesses detailing racialized violence. Kristen Foster’s “‘We Are Men!’: Frederick Douglass and the Fault Lines of Gendered Citizenship.” explores the gendered ideas that are behind citizenship in the 19th century through the eyes of Federick Douglass and other Black men’s fight for equality. As I have said before, the suffrage movement for Black men had much more support than the one for Black women, or White women, which in itself is an interesting historical moment that could yield a few paragraphs in this project. Hannah Rosen, Terror in the Heart of Freedom, writes about the sexual assualts women of color faced. Rosen persuasively argues that in this critical moment of Reconstruction, contests over the future meaning of race were often fought on the terrain of gender.Sexual violence--specifically, white-on-black rape--emerged as a critical arena in postemancipation struggles over African American citizenship.

# data[].attributes.body
In American society, western ideologies has had a large influence on  beauty standards. What’s acceptable?  What’s not acceptable? This influence had a larger effecting whose beauty standards are idolized, due to the western ideologies on  western beauty has been idolized, and has overtrumped the beauty standards of other groups such as African American beauty. Throughout history we see the effect of this influence; which still impacts society now in the 21st century. Through western ideology, western hair has been idolized over African American  hair. As we explored this topic, this study explores the questions: What’s the symbolism behind hair in the African American culture? In respect to the western society, what’s the conflict and controversy of black hair? This studies addresses this question by looking at hair in the work place, school, and even sports. As well as dressing this through literature and scholarly articles.

A few  sources that’s has helped me further answer my questions would have to be Octavia Butler’s Binti, CNN article in relation to a Tik Tok  and “Why don't he Like My Hair?": Constructing African-American Standards of Beauty in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes were Watching God.”

Butler’s  Binti addresses the relationship and symbolism of hair from an afro-futuristic perspective. In Binti Butler uses hair in the trilogy to explore hair in connection to identity and African culture. I feel as this helps answers my question because it looks into African American hair through it’s power/symbolism in connection to African  culture and against western ideologies. In this trilogy you’re able to identify what tribe she is by her hair, adaptation/connection on a larger stand point.

The Tik Tok and CNN article: “Texas student suspended for length of his locs hairstyle referred to alternative school,” is used to target the conflict behind hair in a western dominated society.  This story addresses how a teenager has been suspended back to back due to his hair style, outside suspension causing him to miss out on his education. This child doesn’t have any behavioral records and a model scholar but noted inside of  the Tik Tok they’ve taken measures to go with the school regulations by styling  his hair he was still kicked out. Showing that even with the adaptation of our (black) hair, it’ll never be fit to the standards of western society. Shows a control over body, since he doesn’t conform the student has been suspended and suggested to go to an alternative school In response to his hair; as well as the disregarding  of the Crown Act . Another thing to note from the video used is that a white student was also seen to be walking around the school with “locs” yet the black student Darryl George is being punished .

“Why don't he Like My Hair?": Constructing African-American Standards of Beauty in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes were Watching God.”:

This article addresses the controversy over black women hair. How their natural hair is rejected and favored to convert it to fit into the European style of beauty. Straightened hair, Jheri curls and perms, this is allow in the efforts to fit into the liking of a man (a black man) and society(What's deemed to be appropriate and professional). From the narratives that the author chooses to refer to Janie's hair inside of the "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and the "Song of Solomon"by Toni Morrison. It turns the narrative of hair being represented as strength , freedom and empowerment.  This article answers both questions as to the the symbolism of black hair identified in the female characters addresses in the study. In the book “Their eyes were Watching God,” hair stood to represent strength, freedom and empowerment in comparison to the usage of hair in Binti that addressed hair as symbolizing culture history, identity and  larger connection to those of the “unknown.”

# data[].attributes.body
Abstract: While going through each assigned reading for this course, one thing that has always caught my eye is the importance of animal imagery within these stories. My interest began with researching the significance behind mule imagery and how that related to the history of black women generally, and then I began to notice animal imagery as a whole as we continued to read more and began thinking about the intention of animal description in Black literature as a whole. In my essay, I would like to focus on the following books and how they relate individual stories to mules and a wider range of animal imagery. I will analyze sections in Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Color Purple, and Sing, Unburied, Sing. I would like to begin with an analysis of the word mule specifically. Then as the paper goes on, I would like to analyze how the same strategies used with mule imagery are employed when adding animal imagery. I will bring it together and discuss the importance of using this imagery why it may be a tool in Black literature and how this serves as a form of push-back from Black women writers. I would also like to see how animal imagery has progressed through time, and how we see this used through modern stereotypes.

Annotated Bibliography:

Haurykiewicz, Julie A. “From Mules to Muliebrity: Speech and Silence in ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God.’” The Southern Literary Journal 29, no. 2 (1997): 45–60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20078182.

While this text directly interacts with Their Eyes Were Watching God, I think this would be a perfect way to center the reader's focus on how I plan to interact with mule imagery before going into a more general approach. I would use this as more of a case study to show direct strategies writers use when using animal imagery to convey an underlying point.

Ellenberg, George B. “African Americans, Mules, and the Southern Mindscape, 1850-1950.” Agricultural History, vol. 72, no. 2, 1998, pp. 381–98. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3744388.

I would use this to begin my essay probably and would engage with it in a way that centers the general history of animal imagery as it relates to the Southern landscapes we are continuously put in through the readings in this course. This source sets up a historical context for the use of animal imagery and allows us to understand why in these settings Black writers may have found it essential to incorporate this strategy.

In addition to these, I am planning on meeting with a library specialist within the next two weeks to help me access research that will further this topic.

# data[].attributes.body
Abstract/Proposal: Throughout the books we have read so far this semester, and reinforced now after having watched Daughters of the Dust, the theme of spirituality and religion in Black womanhood, especially Black motherhood, and its implications on self-identity, have particularly struck my interest. I am intrigued to learn more about religion versus spirituality, especially after witnessing the familial conflict in Daughters of the Dust surrounding the tradition of spirituality versus the adoption of more organized religion like Christianity, and further instances of spirituality versus religion in books like The Color Purple, Beloved, and Sing, Unburied, Sing. Building off of this, I want to examine the relationship between religion and spirituality, and Black feminism, and understand how the two concepts interact and shape each other. I will do this by recognizing the various religious and spiritual themes and concepts in the books mentioned, and how they impact the Black women characters and Black mother characters in those stories, and affect the way they shape their self-identity. I will supplement these books and analysis with scholarly articles that talk about the relationship between religion and spirituality and Black women, and the impacts of it in everyday life.

Annotated Sources:

1. Patton, Lori D., and Michelle L. McClure. “Strength in the Spirit: A Qualitative Examination of African American College Women and the Role of Spirituality during College.” The Journal of Negro Education 78, no. 1 (2009): 42–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25608717.

1. This article employs a Black feminist framework to study how Black women navigate college life using spirituality. The authors examine the experiences of 14 Black college women attending PWIs to study how Black women use spirituality in college. They do this to understand the impact of spirituality in helping them to combat the misunderstanding and misrepresentation they often face in college experiences.

2.  Chaney, Cassandra. “The Character of Womanhood: How African American Women’s Perceptions of Womanhood Influence Marriage and Motherhood.” Ethnicities 11, no. 4 (2011): 512–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23890712.

1. This article approaches how Black women perceive womanhood, and how this shapes their perceptions of marriage and motherhood. It takes on a Black feminist approach to examine Black women’s perceptions of womanhood based on family structure and experiences that are characteristically different from European or white notions that shape the perception of womanhood for white women. Additionally, Chaney suggests that a modified version of womanhood has been created by Black women based on their education, social class, and economic position in relation to Black men.

# data[].attributes.headline
Black Motherhood–How do Black women hold communities together?

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Motherhood–How do Black women hold communities together?

# data[].attributes.body
Micaela Rivera:

I plan to explore Black women's role in as the head of the family. I want to put emphasis both the obvious and subtle jobs that these women have on their communities and families.

Three texts that I want to reference in my paper are Beloved by Toni Morrison, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Some supplementary work that I plan to reference are television shows from this century that depict modern day Black families. Rainbow from the sitcom Black-ish is a great example of what the modern day Black mother/head of household looks like.

As a right now, I plan to form these thoughts in a conference paper. I might also consider broadening my topic and discussing Black family dynamics as a whole.

# data[].attributes.body
Women have crucial roles in their communities no matter what their race is, however, these roles were not always the same for each group. My goal in my essay is to unpack the different roles that Black women, in particular, have in their communities. More specifically, I would also want to reveal how Black women who are parents fit into a community differently from Black women who do not have children. There are several stereotypes about Black women that I hope to unpack.

The show Black-ish is an example of a modern and progressive Black family. My analysis of this show would help conceptualize the impacts of the roles of Black women in earlier decades and how those roles resulted in certain stereotypes and roles today. In order to properly unpack these roles, both past and present, I must first research the experiences that Black mother encountered over time. There must be an explanation for why Black mothers take on certain roles now. A source that I think will give me the proper tools to analyze Black motherhood comes from the Michigan Law Review. In an article titled, “Unshackling Black Motherhood,” Dorothy E. Roberts reveals the ways that Black mothers were criminalized, especially for their prenatal care. This prompts questions about the kinds of resources that poorer Black mothers lacked and why they were not provided with the proper tools to grow healthy babies and healthy families. This article will help determine the role of the government had on Black mothers and families. Similarly, Jennifer Nash’s article called, “The Political Life of Black Motherhood,” will serve as a significant source to clarify how nonblack people affected the lives of Black women.

In my meeting with the school librarian, I hope to find materials that surround how Black women and mothers are portrayed in the media and the impact that these mediums have on Black communities today. I would also like to find resources regarding the accuracy of the earlier forms of media.

Dorothy E. Roberts. “Unshackling Black Motherhood.” Michigan Law Review, vol. 95, no. 4, 1997, pp. 938–64. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1290050.

Nash, Jennifer C. “The Political Life of Black Motherhood.” Feminist Studies, vol. 44, no. 3, 2018, pp. 699–712. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.15767/feministstudies.44.3.0699.

# data[].attributes.body
The formation of the identity of African American women and men has been a turbulent one, most precisely in how they’ve informed each other. Transitioning from the status of people enslaved to incrementally gaining freedom and a newfound sense of autonomy, they had to rebuilt their sense of self as a people within a rapidly changing America. Their foundation of identity and humanity stood in relation to their former enslavers, white Americans, which in effect permeated into Black Americans ideological building of self. I want to take a look at American timeline, with an emphasis on the post-reconstruction eras and forward, to observe how - intra-communally- Black Americans began to shape what “Black” meant in America and how that identity was interrogated and shifted through time. Additionally, I want to examine this through an intersectional lens, incorporating intra-communal power dynamics to explore how Black men shaped the identities of Black men, and how Black women fought to achieve autonomy under all of their respective pressures.

To provide context for my research, I will analyze the relationship between the Black men and women in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes are Watching God and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun as many of the contentions and battling for establishment of self is present throughout many of the characters in these text. In analyzing these respective texts, I will note to their specific historical dispositions to further map out the trajectory of this every dithering struggle for identity. I will  In addition to that, I will also include August Wilson’s Fences to compare the portrayal of these role from the perspective of a Black Male author.

To supplement my text I will use the articles

Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self Making in the 19th Century by Sadiya Hartman as this text peers into the ways slavery shaped the identity of Black folks on an individual and communal level. By going back pre-reconsturcution, I plan on noting to the ways Black people have relied on “self making” - a central theme in the article- to maintain their humanity in spite of the brutal systems they had to endure. I plan on comparing those ways with the contemporary avenues of self making Black people had to create when enslavement was no longer the norm. I plan to bridge together the idea of the construction of Blackness and Black womanhood across these two points of references.

I will also use Barbara Walter’s The Cult of Womanhood in order to further elaborate the idea of the construction of womanhood, how it’s differs from an intersectional lens, and the place it has when within the relation of men and women. I want to use it to set a basis of what the historical notion and creation of what a women has been considered and how post reconstruction, Mano of the norms are reinforced in order for Black women to submit to that ideal, despite it never considering Black women in it’s theory in the first place.  The key element were: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesiticity - elements that Black women fulfilled even while enslaved yet were not granted full womanhood.

I plan on meeting with the librarian in order to find text that specifically note to the shift in Black men and women post reconstruction and how their identity were were molded from the ground up.

# data[].attributes.headline
Healing, self-love and Black Motherhood through Hair

# data[].attributes.subject
Healing, self-love and Black Motherhood through Hair

# data[].attributes.body
Sophia Lobkowicz

For final assignment I wanted to focus on the themes of Black Motherhood, healing, and self-love through hair. I was inspired from Channon Miller’s talk “In Search of Hartford’s Black Maternal Garden” where she discussed “homeplace” as a place for Black liberation and survival. She talked about how it is a space that represents mothering-community based care as a means to confront anti-blackness. One of the examples she provided was a beauty parlor. It made me think about the long history of black hair, and how it has been used as a form of resistance to anti-blackness.

Some of the texts that related hair to healing, motherhood and self-love that I wanted to use are: A Raisin in the Sun with Beneatha’s choice to cut her hair and wear it naturally; The Color Purple with Celie combing Shug’s hair; Their Eyes Were Watching God with Janie’s decision to uncover her hair.

Some of the questions that would help develop my research: How has black hair served as a form of resistance to colonialism? How does caring for, and maintaining hair contribute to strengthening black motherhood or sisterhood?

I also wanted to explore questions related to black hair and continued discrimination through the 21st century: How has hair discrimination in a professional setting impacted black women? How has social media impacted accessibility to black hair care products?

For the presentation of my research, I would prefer to do a creative digital exhibit.

# data[].attributes.body
I intend to describe a comprehensive analysis of Octavia Butler’s Kindred by focusing on its role in reimagining slave narratives and Black speculative fiction. I propose to effectively do so by exploring the intersections of historical trauma, race, (dis)ability, and gender, which are all very relevant in Butler’s Kindred. By including the fictional idea of time travel, Butler is able to innovate the genre by directly connecting the past and present through the experiences of Dana. Through this connection, Butler is able to successfully explore and communicate the enduring effects of slavery into the late twentieth century.

I propose to use existing scholarship, specifically from chapters from Sami Schalk’s Bodyminds Reimagined. This book will be especially helpful in outlining how the theme of (dis)ability is used in Butler’s fictional books to help readers conceptualize various forms of identity and oppression. Schalk’s book will also be a useful tool in helping me better understand Butler’s neo-slave narrative in relation to the legacy of slavery and racial violence. To better understand some of the ideas that Schalk discusses, I will read both of Butler's Parable books.

Additionally, I plan to reference Sarah Wood’s “Exorcizing the Past: The Slave Narrative as Historical Fantasy”. This short article describes how Butler was able to challenge preconceived ideas of White and Black femininity and how it was being represented in US society in the 1970s. Further, this article details how Butler was able to use fiction to intervene on Black representation in historical narratives regarding racial dynamics both during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Lastly, I would like to explore how alternative depictions of Kindred contribute to the original text and how they continue to uphold the themes and messages that Butler wanted to convey. There is an original Hulu TV series and a graphic novel that both tell the story of Dana. These forms of storytelling are especially important to analyze as they make Kindred much more accessible and do a great job of helping the reader/audience visualize these graphic scenes.

I am meeting with Dr. Mahoney next week to discuss this topic in greater detail and brainstorm how I might be able to contribute to Kindred’s growing popularity in making the text and themes more accessible online.

Butler, Octavia E. Kindred. Beacon Press. 2003.

Schalk, Sami. Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women's Speculative Fiction. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

Wood, Sarah. “Exorcizing the Past: The Slave Narrative as Historical Fantasy.” Feminist Review, no. 85 (2007): 83–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30140907.

# data[].attributes.headline
Black Wake and Debt in Black American Literature

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Wake and Debt in Black American Literature

# data[].attributes.body
I am very interested in discussing the idea of Trauma expressed as debt in Black literature. In Beloved this "debt" shows up as remomory or a more accurate way to describe it would be that rememory is a way to deal with that debt. Time becomes non-linear. Spaces become mythical and imagination supersedes reality. The house and the ghosts become manifestations of that debt. I want to split this debt into two expressions. One is that the spiritual aspects of the trauma of poverty, which dealt with magical realism and rememory. Furthermore, I want to explore the economic consequences of this debt in the wake. The wake of being black in America. How the impacts of slavery, segregation and racism still impact black Americans, and how that is reflected in the literature that is produced. I have uploaded my main secondary source that discusses debt as I refer to trauma but I will be shortly adding other supporting sources.

# data[].attributes.headline
Black Debt and Wake: How Black American Literature deals and reflects Trauma.

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Debt and Wake: How Black American Literature deals and reflects Trauma.

# data[].attributes.body
Emmanuel Gezahegne Mitikie.

I want to explore the idea of debt in Black American literature. Debt as I see it is essentially trauma from the pasta.  I want to systematically explore debt. Debt can be split into two. One is debt which is concerned with the spiritual consequences of slavery. In Beloved, Morrison deals with debt through rememory, and magical realism i.e. the house and the ghost. The other type of debt is the debt that is economic, and that arises from centuries of slavery, exploitation, segregation, miscegenation, discrimination and racism. This is mainly explored through the WAKE, the modern state experience of the socio-economic lives of Black Americans. I want to first individually explore the two types of debt and later on, show how they combine. Then show how they both make up a significant portion of the Black American experience and how the black literary tradition we have covered in class explores both. I have attached the main secondary source I will be using to define and support my idea of debt. I will later add other secondary sources that further support my claims.

# data[].attributes.headline
Black Motherhood, Healing, and Self-Love through Hair

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Motherhood, Healing, and Self-Love through Hair

# data[].attributes.body
My essay will explore the themes of black motherhood, healing, and self-love through hair. I will first explore the history of black hair and contextualize it in race politics to better explain the conditions that perpetuated discrimination against black women’s hair, but also show the ways in which different hairstyles were used as forms of resistance to slavery and oppression. I will then discuss how Black salons represent mothering-community based care as a means to confront anti-blackness, and how this relates to concepts like “PsychoHairapy.” I will further delve into a few texts that related hair to healing, motherhood, and self-love: A Raisin in the Sun with Beneatha’s choice to cut her hair and wear it naturally; The Color Purple with Celie combing Shug’s hair; Their Eyes Were Watching God with Janie’s decision to uncover her hair. Lastly, I will explore how black hair care is commercialized. I analyze figures like Madam C.J. Walker and how her haircare empire is significant in the Black financial landscape. I will also look at the role of social media in expanding the narrative surrounding black hair care, and whether this serves as a more liberative or damaging process considering the increase of exposure of black haircare products and its subsequent increase in price due to its discovery by white women. I will then connect this to the redefinition of beauty standards by white women, and the appropriation of black hair styles as new forms of oppression through white people defining what is considered appropriate.

Ngandu-Kalenga Greensword, S. (2022). Historicizing black hair politics: A framework for contextualizing race politics. Sociology Compass, 16(8), e13015. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.13015

I will use this article to highlight the role of racial politics in the portrayal of black hair, as well as, analyzing the historical roots of hair discrimination. This will help me provide the context to black hair discrimination, which is what healing and self-love through hair care is combating.

“PsychoHairapy: A Ritual of Healing Through Hair.” PsychCentral. Accessed November 5, 2023. https://psychcentral.com/health/psychohairapy-a-ritual-of-healing-through-hair#The-current-crisis.

This article discusses psychohairapy, as a form of therapy to combat the large rates of depression amongst black women. This article discusses “Psychohairapy” as a more clinical term to discuss a form of self-care and therapy that has always been practiced among black women. I will use it to contextualize how hair related themes in the three texts I selected are forms of self-love, motherhood, and healing.

# data[].attributes.body
Abstract/Proposal:

Throughout class we have read numerous books on slavery and how black women have showed resilience during the oppression they faced. Through the works of Toni Morrison, Harriet Jacobs, and Suzan Lori Parks we are shown stories of black women making tough and grueling decisions in the face of racism and slavery. The main argument for my essay will be the theme of resilience and how that played a part in the stories we read in class as well as other secondary sources that I will be listing below. I also want to relate this theme back to today and as you mentioned in the "final paper instructions" the "#SayHerName" movement. I will be discussing the centering of black women's voices and how this focuses on the experiences and voices of black women, which acknowledges their unique struggles and the issues of racism and sexism in their lives. This focus on the experiences of black women reflects a sense of historical resilience and the need to address their specific challenges. I also want to touch upon not just the resilience black women showed but the way they found their own voices through it. The #SayHerName movement gives these women a voice, and thinking historical black women gave each other a voice/they knew what they needed to do in order to survive.

Annotated Bibliography:

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Random House UK, 2023.

Beloved is a great story written by Toni Morrison that shows that evolution of the protagonist Sethe and how each experience and man in her life makes her make tough decisions, and find her voice through the oppression and hardships she faces. This will be necessary to add in my argument on the idea of resilience.

Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the life of a slave girl. United States: G & D Media, 2020.

This next piece of work by Harriet Jacobs explains the life of Linda who was born into slavery and goes through the hardships of being a young black women and being owned by a master. As her life evolves she too is forced to make hard decisions to fight for her family as well as stick up for her self and survive. This text will also play a key role in the argument go black women and finding their voice/showing resilience.

Parks, Suzan-Lori. Venus: A play. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2015.

This last piece of work that we read in class is a play by Suzan Lori-Parks, and discusses a women and her encounter with sex trafficking and although her rebalance could be considered controversial I want to add a piece of her into my argument.

Collier-Thomas, Bettye, and V. P. Franklin, eds. Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement. NYU Press, 2001. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qfhx4.

I will also be referencing certain pieces of this book by Bettye Collier-Thomas to connect the historical resilience of black women too the present day issues going on.

Stevenson, Brenda E. “Introduction: Women, Slavery, and Historical Research.” The Journal of African American History92, no. 1 (2007): 1–4. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20064149.

As I stated in in my previous proposal I found this secondary source and felt like it gave a good historical background of enslaved women and how they were perceived and treated during the time of slavery. This will help me make a better argument and help the reader understand how strong these women had to be to keep fighting after going through these terrible times.

King, Wilma. “‘Mad’ Enough to Kill: Enslaved Women, Murder, and Southern Courts.” The Journal of African American History 92, no. 1 (2007): 37–56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20064153.

This source gave a brief but interesting example of slave girls who killed their master because of the way they were treated. I am not sure if I will be using this source through my essay but Once I read deeper into it I want to see if it will strengthen my point of resilience.

# data[].attributes.body
Ama Ndukwe

In my piece, I am discussing what I refer to as ‘The BBL Phenomenon.’ Which is essentially the monetization and capitalization of the Black female body, as seen in Venus by Suzan Lori-Parks. I also plan on putting the piece in conversation with “Slave and Mistress: Ideologies of Womanhood Under Slavery” by Hazel Carby as well as either “Seduction and the Ruses of Power,” Scenes of Seduction or Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. I additionally want to incorporate interviews with contemporary black female pop culture stars, and weave in their opinion on body modification. (Nicki Minaj, Jayda Wayda, etc.)

I am not sure as to which would be more prudent to include at the moment but I am open to either. I am leaning towards a wordpress site or possibly a magazine. In which I would be able to firstly share the historical background, calling upon texts I previously mentioned. I would then create a timeline of large scale of  black female monetization leading until the present day in which I would switch formats.

I would then present these modern day examples in a grandiose way, in aims to address the way in which I believe some aspects of pop culture can serve as modern day slave auction pedestals.

I am not quite sure how this will all look in the end, I am hoping that once I settle on a digital platform that I will be able to make a more accurate game plan of what the final result will look like.

An example of one of the pieces I wanna weave in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNQB4ra69tc

Jayda Cheaves On Business, Why She Wont Date Another Rapper After Lil Baby & discouraging Butt Shots

General Premise:

# data[].attributes.headline
The Measure of a Wo(man) - The Intra-communal Racial and Gendered Construction of The Modern African American Women

# data[].attributes.subject
The Measure of a Wo(man) - The Intra-communal Racial and Gendered Construction of The Modern African American Women

# data[].attributes.body
Ayouba Swaray

I want to unpack the cultural identity of the African American woman as it pertains to its' shaping post Reconstruction. In specific, I want to explore the dynamic between Black women and men and the conformities + resistances that persisted as both groups of people attempt to find their space within the structure of white America. How, within the intraracial confines, white supremacy, misogynoir, and gendered violence permeated it's way through, working to dictate how African American women and men utilize their ever dithering relationship with freedom.

The text I will be using as reference towards this phenomenon are Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes were Watching God. I might possibly use August Wilson's Fences as well. I chose these texts because they take place and span across key eras in the 20th century, in which they hold space to interrogate the notions and realities of being a man or a women, with a critical emphasis in the African American community. To supplement these text, I will reference Saidya Hartman's Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self Making in the 19th Century, Barbara Welter's The Cult of True Womanhood, and some of my own research pinpointed on the dynamic between African American women and men in respect to the shaping of the self - across generations.

The project will be presented via a 7-10 page conference styled paper led by the examples/relationships in the book and historically contextualized by the supplementary text.

# data[].attributes.headline
Woods - "Intersections of Fiction and Reality: Exploring Octavia Butler's 'Kindred'

# data[].attributes.subject
Woods - "Intersections of Fiction and Reality: Exploring Octavia Butler's 'Kindred'

# data[].attributes.body
For the final, I believe that I could use digital humanities to display how Octavia Butler used Kindred as a way to effectively bring forward the issues of slavery and racism to the 1970s and 1980s.

I intend to do extensive research on how Octavia Butler's life experiences might have influenced the writing of Kindred, and map it using the StoryMaps platform. I would also like to explore how writing in "speculative fiction" allowed Butler to reach a broader audience and perhaps explain why this book was so successful.

The National Women's History Museum has some information about Butler's life (https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/octavia-estelle-butler#:~:text=Octavia%20Estelle%20Butler%20was%20born,a%20maid%20and%20her%20grandmother.), but I intend on finding more scholarly writings that discuss her history in California and compare it to the experiences of Dana, who is also a Black woman writer in California.

The StoryMaps tool will be especially useful as it offers a dynamic tool to illustrate these potential connections and potentially demonstrate how the use of fictional writing can provoke the nation to think critically about Black women through American history.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Octavia Butler was a pioneering writer of science fiction. As one of the first African American and female science fiction writers, Butler wrote novels that concerned themes of injustice towards African Americans, global warming, women's rights, and political disparity. Her books are now taught in schools and universities across the U.S.

Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California in 1947. She grew up poor in a city that, while not segregated legally, was segregated in fact. Her father, who worked as a shoe shiner, died when she was seven and Butler was raised by her mother who worked as a maid and her grandmother. Butler remembered accompanying her mother to work at wealthy homes in Pasadena and having to enter through the back door. Her mother, who only had three years of formal schooling, worked incredibly hard to make sure Butler had more opportunities and a better education than she had.

Butler attended Pasadena public schools where, as a shy and frequently lonely student who struggled with dyslexia, she felt left behind. Her teachers interpreted her slower reading as an unwillingness to do the work rather than a sign of her struggles with dyslexia. When she was given books to read in school, she found them boring and unrelatable, and she begged her mother for a library card. She recalled her mother, "looked surprised and happy. She immediately took me to the library and got me a card. From then on the library was my second home." She had an endless appetite for stories and frequently made up her own while sitting on her grandmother's porch. She knew she wanted to write science fiction after seeing a 1954 B-Movie, Devil Girl from Mars, at age nine. She recalled in interviews that two things struck her after seeing it, "Somebody got paid for writing that story!," and "Geez, I can write a better story than that!"

Butler began to find "companionship in words," and she recalled that by the time she was ten she could be found carrying around a large notebook, writing down stories whenever she got a free moment. Whenever she wrote stories for school, they were so unusual that many of her teachers assumed she had copied them from published works. One teacher recognized her talents and encouraged the then 13-year-old Butler to submit one of her stories to a science fiction magazine for publication. That submission was the first of many and solidified her desire to-and her belief that she could-become a professional writer.

Butler graduated from Pasadena City College with an Associate's Degree in 1968. She then continued taking classes, first at California State University in Los Angeles and then at the University of California at Los Angeles. She took writing classes but also studied anthropology, psychology, physics, biology, and geology, among other subjects. She loved learning and recalled, "You're always realizing there is so much out there that you don't know." She also took a class with science fiction writer Harlan Ellison at the Screen Writers' Guild Open Door Program. Ellison became a mentor to Butler and encouraged her to attend the Clarion Science Fiction Writer's Workshop. Before the end of the workshop, Butler had sold her first two stories.

In an interview later in her life, Butler said, "I don't recall ever having wanted desperately to be a black woman fiction writer . . . I wanted to be a writer." Despite her success with the short stories, Butler struggled to get other stories published. She would rise at two A.M. every morning to write and then went to work in a series of odd jobs, including a telemarketer, potato chip inspector, dishwasher, and warehouse worker. After a series of rejections, Butler shifted gears and tried to write her first novel. That first manuscript was purchased by Doubleday and published in 1976. Patternmaster caught people's attention and became the first in the Patternist trilogy.

Butler wrote 12 more books. Many consider Kindred (1979) a modern-day classic. Kindred tells the story of Dana, a contemporary African American writer who is hurtled backward in time to antebellum Maryland where she must learn to conform to the times in order to survive. Butler heavily researched the book, spending time in Maryland and in the archives to make sure she understood the history and the geography. Butler often said she was inspired to write Kindred when she heard young African Americans minimize the cruelty and severity of enslavement. She wanted younger readers to know not only the facts of enslavement but what it felt like, making sure to humanize those who survived the exploitative institution. Kindred is now a mainstay in many high school and college classrooms.

Butler disagreed with the idea that African American characters only belonged in science fiction if their race was crucial to the plot, which was the predominant way African American characters were included in the genre when she began writing. She once said in an interview, "I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing. I can write my own stories and I can write myself in." Butler's writing became an early pillar of the subgenre of Afrofuturism, which UCLA defines, "as a wide-ranging social, political and artistic movement that dares to imagine a world where African-descended peoples and their cultures play a central role in the creation of that world".

Butler won numerous prestigious awards for her writing. In 1995, she was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Grant-the only science fiction writer to receive this award. She won Nebula and Hugo Awards, the two highest honors for science fiction, a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, and the City College of New York's Langston Hughes Medal in 2005. As a pioneer in science fiction, she opened up the genre to many other African American and female writers.

Butler died suddenly in her home in Seattle from a fall on February 24, 2006. Since her passing, her books have continued to rise in popularity and many have forthcoming TV or movie adaptations. She once told PBS that her oath was, "'Do the thing that you love and do it as well as you possibly can and be persistent about it.'" Readers are all the better for her dedication to and love of words.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Octavia Butler was a pioneering writer of science fiction. As one of the first African American and female science fiction writers, Butler wrote novels that concerned themes of injustice towards African Americans, global warming, and women's rights.

# data[].attributes.body
Adapted Version:

Page 1: Introduction (to be reworked)

In my piece, I will address the implications that the monetization and fetishization of black women has led to an influx of plastic surgery amongst those in popular culture and still there is profit off of the “black butt” (In regards to Sarah Bartmaan, Nicki Minaj, Kylie Jenner).

Page 2: The Beginning (history)

Sarah Bartmaan/Hottentot Venus

The "Batty" Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body

Summary

"The 'Batty' Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body," discusses the self-representation of black women and how it negotiates the gaze of the viewers, taking into account the historical meanings inscribed on their bodies. The author, Williams, aims to suggest to the viewer that historical precedents still hold resonance and power in the way contemporary images of African American women are read and responded to. She frames her body in gold, using gilt frames as a gesture toward aesthetic appreciation and a project of seeing each other as black female subjects. The piece also explores the struggle to redefine historic images, which requires black women to resist the defensive "policing" of each other's bodies and sexualities, dating back to the era of black "club women" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article discusses how black middle-class women located themselves within the boundaries of respectability and the tensions that arose when they failed to adhere to certain behaviors, such as the presentation of their "too large behinds.”

Disabling Bodies

In the section on disabling bodies, Janell Hobson discusses the racialized sense of aesthetics that positions blackness in terms of grotesquery while whiteness serves as an emblem of beauty. She references Immanuel Kant's definition of beauty and Noel Carroll's concept of nonbeauty or ugliness as the ultimate in imperfection, which can be used to endorse or demean the moral credentials of an ethnic or racial group. Hobson also explores how the grotesque figure, identified by Carroll, is recognized as carnivalesque by Mikhail Bakhtin, subverting social hierarchies and normalcy. Rosemarie Garland Thomson reinterprets this carnivalesque body as a disabled body, presenting the ultimate challenge to perfection and progress. She pairs female bodies and disabled bodies within a feminist disability theory, recognizing how these bodies are similarly cast as deviant and inferior. Hobson argues that these discourses perpetuate black women's "outsider" and "disabled" status, providing further justification for their devaluation and discrimination. She also discusses how black women's representational history is one of "unmirroring," constantly grating against the distorted images of the dominant culture. Hobson emphasizes the need for a black feminist aesthetic to challenge the dominant culture's discourse of the black body as grotesque and articulate a black liberation discourse on the black body beautiful

Hottentot Venus

The section on the Hottentot Venus discusses the historical and cultural significance of Saartjie Baartman, a South African woman who was exhibited in 19th-century Europe due to her steatopygia, or the enlargement of the buttocks. Baartman's exhibition symbolized the connections between grotesquerie, sexual deviance, and racial difference. She was put on display as a mythical and "strange"-shaped "Hottentot," framed by a history of colonial domination. Her buttocks, stigmatized in Europe as a condition of "steatopygia," served as an important symbol of racial difference in her exhibition. The section also explores the cultural and scientific dehumanization of Baartman, including the pseudoscientific studies of her anatomy and the popular culture representations of her body. The Hottentot Venus exhibition gave rise to numerous cartoons and advertisements, emphasizing the perceived "ugliness" and "freakishness" of Baartman's body. The section highlights the cultural misunderstandings and racial prejudices that constructed an ideology of racial "difference" and "superiority." It also discusses the sexualization and dehumanization of Baartman's body, as well as the role of science in shaping discourses on race and sexuality. The section provides a critical analysis of the historical representation of the Hottentot Venus and its impact on the perception of black female bodies in Western culture

Page 3: Modern Implications

The "Batty" Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body

Race, Gender, and Aesthetics

The section on race, gender, and aesthetics discusses the role of gender in reinforcing an ideology of racial difference within racist discourse. It explores how Baartman's body came to reinforce an ideology of racial difference and how gender played a key role in this reinforcement. The section highlights how Baartman's buttocks and genitalia shaped a view of deviant sexuality that could not have been represented if it were a "Hottentot" male exhibited in a similar fashion. It also discusses the historical and cultural tropes of rawness, lasciviousness, and "nastiness" associated with the black female rear end, as well as the different cultural contexts in which artists like Jean-Paul Goude and Robert Mapplethorpe operate. The section further examines the representation of black male and female bodies in art and popular culture, and how these representations reinforce stereotypes of black female sexuality as deviant and grotesque, while black male bodies are often fetishized or celebrated. The section also delves into the cultural distinctions in the celebration of black female sensuality and the stigmatization of black female bodies, as well as the different cultural contexts that inform the work of photographers and artists. It provides a critical analysis of the representation of black male and female bodies in art and popular culture, and how these representations perpetuate racial and gender stereotypes

The Commodification of the Black Female Body

Summary

The paper explores how the commodification and objectification of African American women's bodies were used to uphold racial capitalism and white superiority. It delves into the works of scholars such as Marx, Du Bois, and Robinson to analyze the intersection of capitalism, racism, and gender oppression. The paper is divided into four sections, covering the origin of racial capitalism, the relationship between slavery and gender, the role of race in justifying the sexual abuse of Black females, and the historical development of racial capitalism. It provides a critical analysis of how the exploitation of African American women was integral to the development of capitalism and how their bodies were treated as commodities for economic gain.

The Term Fetish

Marx:

Marx uses the term "fetish" in the concept of commodity fetishism to describe the way in which commodities are perceived in society. He does not use the term in a derogatory manner, but rather draws upon its colonial origin to explain the relationship that money has with all other commodities. The term "fetish" was originally used to describe religious objects with magical powers, and Marx applied this idea to understand how the value in commodities and money hides the social and labor relations involved in their production and exchange. This concept of commodity fetishism is essential to understanding how the commodification and objectification of African American women's bodies were used to uphold racial capitalism and white superiority, as discussed in the provided document.

Page 5

Nicki Minaj:

Her interactions with cosmetic surgery specifically her interview with Joe Budden

A Conversation With Nicki Minaj & Joe Budden

Kylie Jenner or Kim Kardashian

https://www.mic.com/life/the-sarah-baartman-effect-how-black-womens-bodies-are-still-both-exploited-revered-82504058

How Kylie after the trends changed (sofia richie) moved away from that body type

Potentially insert tiktoks

The Butt Remix: Beauty, Pop Culture, Hip Hop, and the Commodification of the Black Booty

An example of one of the pieces I wanna weave in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNQB4ra69tc

# data[].attributes.body
My digital exhibit that I will create will further explore the themes of black femininity in domestic settings. For my project, I will base my research around Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. I will use this and The Amen Corner by James Baldwin to give a portrayal of black femininity by black authors in the 1950s.

For my project, I want to display an evolution of the portrayal of black domestic femininity. For this, I am going to select a play from the 1930s, 1990s, and the 2010s to compare and contrast with the two texts from the 1950s.

Annotated Bibliography:

1.) DOSSETT, KATE. “Garveyism, Communism, and Gender Trouble: Theodore Ward’s Big White Fog.” In Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal, 164–202. University of North Carolina Press, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469654447_dossett.9.

This is a great article that dives into the deeper messages of Big White Fog. Dossett discusses each of the three lead characters in great detail, outlining what they represent and how this matters in a government-funded drama written by a black man.

2.) SMITH, JUDITH E. “RERACIALIZING THE ORDINARY AMERICAN FAMILY: RAISIN IN THE SUN.” In Visions of Belonging: Family Stories, Popular Culture, and Postwar Democracy, 1940-1960, edited by ROBIN D. G. KELLEY and JANICE RADWAY, 281–328. Columbia University Press, 2004. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/smit12170.13.

Another really cool article about reracializing the characters of Raisin in the Sun. Smith revisits the praises of Hansberry's work to discuss whether or not the play would still be as meaningful without the blackness as some critics claimed it would be.