305 p., Examines how social inequalities, in combination with identified social risk factors, contribute to disparities in the incidence of schizophrenia among individuals of African-Caribbean descent in England. It addresses the psychiatric epidemiological puzzle that indicates African-Caribbbeans in England have significantly greater rates of schizophrenia than the general British population. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork with patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, their relatives, and community members in North London, the researcher argued that specific social changes and historical forces interlink to create a toxic environment characterized by negative expressed emotions and social defeat to affect African-Caribbeans' mental health.
203 p., This research sterns from twelve months of ethnographic research with Haitian migrant women who reside in Batey Sol , a former sugar-company labor camp located along the Línea Noroeste (northwest line) linking the Dominican Rebulic's border town of Dajabón with the urban center of Santiago. The multi-sited study considers the larger network of political, social, and economic structures and relations of power in which these women are positioned in their daily lives and through their livelihoods as market women.
78 p., Examines the ways in which the African American identity articulates and constructs itself through dance. Norman Bryson, an art historian, suggests that approaches from art history, film and comparative literature are as well applicable to the field of dance research. Therefore, as his main critical lens and a theoretical foundation, the author adopts the analytical approach developed by Erwin Panofsky, an art historian and a proponent of integrated critical approach, much like the one suggested by Bryson. Demonstrates that Erwin Panofsky's iconology, when applied as a research method, can make valuable contributions to the field of Dance Studies. Uses Katherine Dunham's original recordings of diaspora dances of the Caribbean and her modern dance choreography titled L'Ag'Ya to look for evidence for the paradigm shift from "primitive" to "diaspora" in representation of Black identity in dance also with the aim of detecting the elements that produce cultural difference in dance.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
319 p., Africans in Jamaica developed and exhibited a multiplicity of cultural identities and a complex set of relationships amongst themselves, reflective of their varied cultural, political, social, and physical origins. In the context of late-18th and early-19th century Buff Bay, Jamaica, most Africans were enslaved by whites to serve as laborers on plantations. However, a smaller group of Africans emerged from enslavement on plantations to form their own autonomous Maroon communities, alongside the plantation context and within the system of slavery. These two groups, enslaved Africans and Maroons, had a very complex set of relationship and identities that were fluid and constantly negotiated within the Jamaican slave society that was in turn hostile to both groups.
276 p., A critical examination of Haitian migration and displacement in North America that engages both a theoretical and literary analysis of exile and diaspora as consequences of migration and displacement. Argues that Haitian writers in North America inscribe migration by troping exile and diaspora to speak of the predicament of displaced migratory subjects and their inevitable crossings of places, landscapes, borders, cultures, and nations. Analyzes three novels by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat: Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), The Farming of Bones (1998), and the Dew Breaker (2004); and two novels by Haitian Canadian writer Myriam Chancy: Spirit of Haiti (2003) and The Scorpion's Claw (2005).
101 p., Little published research describes views of intimate heterosexual relationships among non-Western samples of women. This study represents a first attempt to document Afro-Caribbean women's views about their intimate relationships. A small sample of 53 Afro-Caribbean women from the island of Barbados were interviewed in their homes for a larger study of body image. Included in the measures were questionnaires about the extent to which women's expectations were or were not met in their current heterosexual relationships and if symptoms of depression were experienced. The women in this study generally reported, like Western women, that their relationships met their expectations (whatever those expectations may have been), that they contributed more positive than negative behaviors to the relationship, and that they experienced mostly mild or infrequent depressive symptoms. Unlike findings for Western samples, however, neither relationship duration, women's level of education, nor the extent to which they reported depressive symptoms covaried with whether they reported that their expectations were met or not. In summary, this study did not shed light on possible sources of Afro-Caribbean women's relationship satisfaction, although it potentially ruled out a few.
274 p., Argues that colonialism, or its impact, as a relation of power is threaded through the related themes of gender/sexuality, the environment, and global capitalism in Jamaica Kincaid's work. The author is interested in how the intersection of these themes enhance Kincaid's critique of the impact of colonialism on the people of Antigua and the Anglophone African Caribbean.
217 p., A comparative study of late 20th-century migration narratives by African American and Afro-Caribbean women, such as Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, and Loida Maritza Pérez. Informed by critical race theory, postcolonial, and feminist approaches to literature, this dissertation intervenes in literary studies of the African diaspora by underscoring the cultural and political implications that class and national differences have on intra-racial relations among Blacks.
306 p., This project brings together adventure novels by white British authors, like Frederick Marryat, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and H. Rider Haggard, and African American and Afro-Caribbean texts by authors like Frederick Douglass, Pauline Hopkins, and Maxwell Philip, to argue that the sensational elements of the adventure genre that were so effective in developing British national identity were appropriated by African American and Afro-Caribbean authors to re-imagine national identity as a flexible and multi-ethnic concept.
200 p., An interdisciplinary project that combines cultural studies, film, gender, and postcolonial studies to investigate Afro-Caribbean models of masculinity in film and literature. The project details the ways in which imperialist phallocentric masculinity is valorized within African American cinema and exported to the Caribbean where it is mimicked and valorized. Secondly, it introduces Afro-Caribbean masculinity into the scholarly discussion of African American masculinities started by several African American cultural critics such as Mark Anthony Neal and bell hooks. Both of these prominent scholars in African American studies criticize the construction of African American masculinity as presented in African American culture. They, and others, call for a more progressive Black masculinity, one that supports Black feminism and fights homophobia. Much of their critique also applies to Afro-Caribbean culture, which has been strongly influenced by African American culture in regard to the traumatizing transition between boyhood and manhood which has great influence on Black males perspectives on feminism and homophobia. hook's critique in particular challenges the passive acceptance of "soul murder" or, in other words, silent acceptance of trauma as rites of passage into manhood for African American men.
