scholarly journals The black female slave takes literary revenge: Female gothic motifs against slavery in Hannah Crafts’s "The Bondwoman’s Narrative"

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicent Cucarella-Ramon
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Female Gothic ◽  
American Citizen ◽  
The Social ◽  
Female Slave ◽  
Literary Devices ◽  
Hannah Crafts

The Bondwoman’s Narrative is a novel that functions as a story made up from Hannah Crafts’s experiences as a bondwoman and thus merges fact and fiction giving a thoroughly new account of slavery both committed to reality and fiction. Following and taking over the Gothic literary genre that spread in Europe as a reaction toward the Romantic spirit, Crafts uses it to denounce the degrading slavery system and, mainly, to scathingly attack the patriarchal roots that stigmatize black women as the ultimate victims. It is my contention that Hannah Crafts uses the female Gothic literary devices both to attack slavery and also to stand as a proper (African) American citizen capable of relating to the cultural outlets that American culture offered aiming to counteract the derogatory stereotypes that rendered African American women at the very bottom of the social ladder.

scholarly journals Sassy Sasha?: The intersectionality of (im)politeness and sociolinguistics

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Troutman
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Black Females ◽  
Online Assessments ◽  
General Linguistic

Abstract This article focuses on intersections of race, gender, class, and (im)politeness within the African American speech community (AASC). Although general linguistic theorizing aims at universalizing (im)politeness, ultimately identifying common components within human (im)politeness systems worldwide, African American perspectives have not been interjected within that broader theorizing. Thus, I examine (im)politeness from the perspective of African Americans with a focus on females’ linguistic and nonlinguistic behaviors. A plethora of work examines, challenges, and refutes stereotypical gender. I explore facets of the stereotypical, particularly as applied to Black females with the aim of broadening understandings of (im)politeness based on cultural variation. Specifically, I examine sassy as a social construct when applied to Black women in U.S. contexts, especially two Black women’s online assessments of sassy performativity by Sasha Obama, as a vehicle for allowing Black women’s voices and experiences to enter into theory-making. The analysis is interpretative and idiographic. The two African American women bloggers’ words and meanings suggest that (im)politeness within the AASC resides in sociolinguistics, not pragmatics. As a result of the analysis, I suggest that (im)politeness theorizing could pay attention to the social embodiedness of human polite and impolite behaviors. This, in part, constitutes the sociolinguistics of (im)politeness.

scholarly journals “I Worry about My Community”: African American Women Utilizing Communal Notions of Citizenship in the Social Studies Classroom

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Elizabeth Vickery
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Studies ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Students Of Color ◽  
Title Page ◽  
American Women ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ethic Of Caring ◽  
Feminist Ethic ◽  
Multiple Case

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="section"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="section"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>This qualitative multiple case study utilizes a Black feminist ethic of caring (Collins, 2009; Thompson, 1998) to explore how three African American women social studies teachers draw on their personal and community knowledge to conceptualize and teach the construct of citizenship to their students of color. Instead of conveying traditional notions of citizenship that value blind patriotism to the nation-state and individualism, they instead chose to teach citizenship as relational and centered on uplifting their cultural community. This study hopes to shed light on how critical notions of citizenship may be presented and utilized in classrooms.</span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>

scholarly journals African American Women and Domestic Violence: Addressing their Voice of Silence

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernice Kennedy ◽  
Chalice Rhodes (Former Jenkins)
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Domestic Violence ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
White Women ◽  
The United States ◽  
Slave Owner ◽  
American Women ◽  
Strong Black Women

Abstract Historically, during slavery, the international slave trade promoted normalization of violence against African American women. During slavery, African American women endured inhuman conditions because of the majority race views of them as being over-sexualized, physically strong, and immoral. This perception of the African American women as being highly sexual and more sexual than white women results in slave owner justifying their sexual violation and degrading of the African American women. The stereotypical representations of African American women as strong, controlling, dangerous, fearless, and invulnerable may interfere with the African American women receiving the needed services for domestic violence in the community. The Strong Black Women Archetype has been dated back to slavery describing their coping mechanism in dealing with oppression by developing a strong, less traditionally female role. The authors developed a model: The Multidimensional Perspectives of Factors Contributing to Domestic Violence of African American Women in the United States. This model depicts historically, the factors contributing to domestic violence of African American women in the United States. Also, this model addressed the African American women subscribing to the Strong Black Women Archetype to cope with domestic violence. Despite the increase in domestic violence in African American women, they focused more on the issue of racism instead of sexism in America. African American women have experienced the two obstacles of racism and sexism in America. However, African American women and men believe racism is more critical than sexism. Therefore, domestic violence in the African American population may remain silent because of cultural loyalty. However, the voice of silence of African American females is gradually changing with the upcoming generations.

scholarly journals THE SEQUEL: THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT, THE NINETEENTH AMENDMENT, AND SOUTHERN BLACK WOMEN'S STRUGGLE TO VOTE

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liette Gidlow
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Woman Suffrage ◽  
The South ◽  
American Women ◽  
Nineteenth Amendment ◽  
Fifteenth Amendment

This essay reframes both the woman suffrage narrative and narratives of African American voting rights struggles by focusing on the experiences of southern African American women between the 1870s and the 1920s. It argues that the Fifteenth Amendment remained central to their suffrage strategy long after the failure of the “New Departure” to win court sanction caused white suffragists to abandon it. As white supremacists in the South worked at the turn of the century to disfranchise black men, leading African American suffragists such as Mary Church Terrell, Gertrude Bustill Mossell, and Adella Hunt Logan called for the enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as well as the enfranchisement of black women. After the federal woman suffrage amendment was ratified in 1920, many southern African American women encountered the same barriers to voting—obstructionist tactics, threats, and violence—that black men had faced a generation earlier. In short, for aspiring African American voters in the South, the failure of the Nineteenth Amendment to secure voting rights for black women constituted a sad sequel to the failure of the Fifteenth Amendment to secure voting rights for black men.This interpretation offers three significant interventions. It pairs the Reconstruction-era Amendments with the Nineteenth Amendment, recognizing their shared focus on voting rights. It connects the voting rights struggles of southern African Americans across genders and generations. Finally, it finds that, for some women, the canonical “century of struggle” for voting rights continued long after the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified.

scholarly journals Christianity’s Last Stand: Visions of Spirituality in Post-1970 African American Women’s Literature

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 369
Author(s):  
Trudier Harris
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Women Writers ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Religion And Spirituality ◽  
American Women Writers ◽  
Black Women Writers ◽  
The Moment

Christianity appealed to writers of African descent from the moment they set foot on New World soil. That attraction, perhaps as a result of the professed mission of slaveholders to “Christianize the heathen African,” held sway in African American letters well into the twentieth century. While African American male writers joined their female counterparts in expressing an attraction to Christianity, black women writers, beginning in the mid-twentieth century, consistently began to express doubts about the assumed altruistic nature of a religion that had been used as justification for enslaving their ancestors. Lorraine Hansberry’s Beneatha Younger in A Raisin in the Sun (1959) initiated a questioning mode in relation to Christianity that continues into the present day. It was especially after 1970 that black women writers turned their attention to other ways of knowing, other kinds of spirituality, other ways of being in the world. Consequently, they enable their characters to find divinity within themselves or within communities of extra-natural individuals of which they are a part, such as vampires. As this questioning and re-conceptualization of spirituality and divinity continue into the twenty-first century, African American women writers make it clear that their characters, in pushing against traditional renderings of religion and spirituality, envision worlds that their contemporary historical counterparts cannot begin to imagine.

scholarly journals Understanding and effectively addressing breast cancer in African American women: Unpacking the social context

Cancer ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 122 (14) ◽  
pp. 2138-2149 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Williams ◽  
Selina A. Mohammed ◽  
Alexandra E. Shields
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
African American ◽  
Social Context ◽  
African American Women ◽  
American Women ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals Increasing Physical Activity in Black Women: Results from a Randomized Trial Conducted in Faith-Based Settings

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melicia C. Whitt-Glover ◽  
Moses V. Goldmon ◽  
Ziya Gizlice ◽  
Marie Sillice ◽  
Lyndsey Hornbuckle ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Controlled Trial ◽  
Control Group ◽  
High Risk Population ◽  
Post Intervention ◽  
American Women

<p><strong>Objective: </strong>The Learning and Developing Individual Exercise Skills (L.A.D.I.E.S.) for a Better Life study compared a faith-integrated (FI) and a secular (SEC) intervention for increasing physical activity with a self-guided (SG) control group among African American women. <strong></strong></p><p><strong>Design/Setting/Participants: </strong>L.A.D.I.E.S. was a cluster randomized, controlled trial. Churches (n=31) were randomized and women within each church (n=12 – 15) received the same intervention. <strong></strong></p><p><strong>Interventions: </strong>FI and SEC participants received 24 group-based sessions, delivered over 10 months. SG participants received printed materials to review independently for 10 months. Participants were followed for 12-months post-intervention to assess long-term intervention impact. </p><p><strong>Main Outcome Measures: </strong>Data on participant characteristics, physical activity, and intervention-related constructs were collected at baseline, 10 months, and 22 months. <strong></strong></p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Intervention session attendance was greater for FI compared with SEC participants (15.7 + 5.7 vs 12.4 + 7.3 sessions, respectively, P&lt;.01). After 10 months, FI and SEC participants significantly increased daily walking (+1,451 and +1,107 steps/ day, respectively) compared with SG participants (-128 steps/day). Increases were maintained after 22 months in the FI group compared with the SG group (+1092 vs. +336 daily steps, P&lt;.01). Between-group changes in accelerometer-assessed physical activity were not statistically significant at any time point. <strong></strong></p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The FI intervention is a feasible strategy for short- and long-term increases in physical activity among African American women. Additional dissemination and evaluation of the strategy could be useful for reducing chronic disease in this high-risk population. <em></em></p><p><em>Ethn Dis.</em>2017;27(4):411- 420; doi:10.18865/ed.27.4.411. </p>

Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Durkin
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
American Women ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Katherine Dunham ◽  
Visual Impact ◽  
Josephine Baker

This book investigates African American dancers Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham’s self-inventions on screen and in writing to map the intellectual underpinnings and visual impact of their art. Baker was the first Black woman to enjoy a starring role in mainstream cinema and Dunham was the first Black choreographer to be credited for her screen work. Equally, they were the first well-known African American women to produce multivolume accounts of their lives, and their writings serve as valuable firsthand documents of Black women’s interwar experiences. Why did Baker and Dunham enjoy such groundbreaking literary and cinematic careers? What do such careers tell us about the challenges and opportunities that they encountered as African American women seeking to navigate midcentury geographical and cultural boundaries? Why did they turn to life writing and the screen and on what terms were they able to engage with these mediums as Black women? How did contemporary Black screen audiences receive their work? Where do Baker and Dunham’s films and writings fit into African American literary and cinematic histories and why are they largely absent from these histories? This book investigates these questions. In so doing, it uncovers the cultural significance of Baker and Dunham’s films and writings and interrogates their performances within them to recover their authorship.

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