Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
267 p, This dissertation offers an economic analysis of militarization in the Caribbean through an examination of United States Department of Defense contract awards
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
213 p, Examines the teaching and learning of writing in the first college-level English course students are required to take at the College of the Bahamas
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
274 p., In 1915, American Marine forces landed in Haiti under the guise of a mission for pacification. However, they actually ended up occupying the country for a period of two decades, as they controlled with a tight grip its political affairs as well as its economic resources. The present study deals with the educational development in Haiti during those eventful years.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
159 p, Discusses the importance of the role played by the Caribbean mother in her Latina daughters' negotiation of a hybrid identity as seen through the works of Julia Álvarez, Cristina García, and Esmeralda Santiago
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
332 p, Focuses on the overlooked role that mid-level combat officers play in creating military doctrine. Mars Learning closely evaluates Marine civil and military pacification operations in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua, and illuminates the debates surrounding the development of Marine Corps’ small wars doctrine between 1915 and 1940.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
350 p, Presents evidence of this transformation as it has affected Caribbean food systems and evaluates its impact on food import dependence and nutritional vulnerability
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
195 p, "Over one-third of households in Jamaica are headed by women in the permanent absence of partners. Within the context of the Jamaican social and economic conditions, this study examines the familial experiences of poor women as mothers and providers in female-headed households." (Author)
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
323 p, This thesis explores mestizaje as transculturation, and as an ideology. As transculturation, which is the outcome of the mixture of Spaniards (or Portuguese), Indians, and blacks
243 p, "Explores the Rastafari movement and the Nation of Islam as institutions that provide a group-identity for their adherents. The study seeks to determine the characteristics of the identity that is institutionalized by each movement, and the nature of the institutionalization process. The research was conducted primarily in South Florida where both movements exist... Both movements were found to be millenarian in nature, essentially because of the significant utility of the concept that their members would rise to prominence through God's grace. Additionally, both movements were identified as expressive social movements, since they were determined as being primarily concerned with changing the attitudes of their members rather than effecting structural social change." (author)
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
248 p, Rhetorically, the composite message of reggae music makes claims on attitudes and behaviors which are characterized as appeals to resist the dominant ideology of Jamaica
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Jamaican deejay Yellowman is best known for 'slackness': lyrics centered on masculine heterosexual potency, sexist objectification of women, and graphic sexual narratives. Yet a deeper look at Yellowman's life and recorded output suggests that when his slackness is read in the context of Afro-Jamaican culture, reggae history, and his Rastafarian faith, a more complex interpretation of his slackness is needed. The study draws on Carolyn Cooper's (2001) theory that slackness is a 'metaphorical revolt against law and order, an undermining of consensual standards of decency' (p. 141). Whereas the term 'culture' is used in reggae to depict music that is Afrocentric, Rasta-inspired, and socially conscious, and is normally seen as the antithesis of slackness, it is suggested that for Yellowman, the slack/culture dichotomy is eroded when slackness becomes part of the religious repertoire of resistance against mainstream Jamaican society. The dissertation presents: a) an overview of theory and methodology b) an ethnographic case study based on Yellowman's life and career, and c) four analytical chapters that offer itineraries to theorize slackness in Yellowman's music. First, it is argued that through slackness Yellowman subverted embedded Jamaican cultural notions of sexuality, gender, race, nationality, and beauty by promoting the dundus (black albino) as sexually appealing, hyper-masculine, and part of the imagined black nation. Second, it is demonstrated how Yellowman's sexual lyrics are an example of Obika Gray's (2004) thesis that slackness was a conscious political project employed by the Jamaican poor to contest the normative values of dominant society. The pitting of Yellowman and slackness in reggae journalism against Bob Marley and culture is contested. Third, it is refuted that Yellowman employs slackness for the purpose of moral regulation based on conservative Afro-Jamaican sexual mores and his understanding of Rastafarian morality. Finally, Yellowman's perforating of Christian dualistic ideas of carnal/spiritual is situated in the Rastafarian Babylon/Zion binary, demonstrating how Afro-Caribbean religion has redefined Christian dualism using an Afrocentric body-positive ideology.
