Thesiss

Africa has been subject to Western misrepresentations since the earliest ventures of Europeans into the continent. The colonial clichés of Africa as the “Dark continent” and its people as lazy, licentious savages incapable of progress have been established to justify Western exp…

Immigration to the United States from African nations is growing exponentially. Female African immigrant populations in the United States are growing faster than male African immigrant populations. Despite the growing population, there has been limited research examining the Afr…

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the role that information plays in the decision-making process of people leaving their native countries in distress and seeking refuge in a camp in a foreign country, in this case, Tanzania. The rise in the number of refugees globa…

The Baltimore Afro American newspaper, founded in 1892 advocated an African identity and forged a connection to Africa and other parts of the Diaspora for the local and national Black community. This dissertation uses a Pan-African paradigm to examine the Afro American's coverag…

This dissertation is about the transformation of an African pastoral system, involving the intertwined processes of intensification and individualization. The intensification of the pastoral system is a response to the disappearance of rangelands, and has led to a significant in…

The dissertation examines the transmission of cultural values in a selection of African women's texts, written in English and published between 1966 and 1986. Focusing on a range of works by Kenyan, Nigerian and South African women, the study explores modes of memory and examine…

This study uses expatriation as an analytical framework for exploring the works of African women who have left their African homelands and have relocated to the West. These five authors, Calixthe Beyala from Cameroon, Ken Bugul from Senegal, Assia Djebar from Algeria, Buchi Emec…

This dissertation entitled, “In the Spirit of Community: African Dance in Transmission at the KanKouran,” focuses on Assane Konte and his development of the KanKouran West African Dance Company (KWADC or KanKouran) as a transmitter of West African culture, through traditional We…

My research explores the link (“Missing Link”) between African-American music and North African core-musical traditions. To accomplish this, in my research I have examined the transmutation of core North African (Moroccan) musical traditions to Spain during the Middle Ages (711–…

Many scholars, critics and popular culture agree that colonialism has impoverished, marginalized, destabilized and deprived Africa of her voice for years. Africa has been in danger of losing its identity within the global economy by fast internalizing an array of colonial cultur…

The subject of my dissertation is cinematic constructions of African immigrant and French identities. I analyze Vivre au Paradis (Bourlem Guerdjou), Soleil Ô (Med Hondo), La Noire de… (Ousmane Sembene), and Mémoires d'immigrés (Yamina Benguigui) from cultural, aesthetic, and pol…

The dissertation investigates the relationship between Francophone African literature and film and the self-representations of four prominent artists of the region. While scholars have previously examined interviews, essays, and letters for their biographical value, my dissertat…

The log xylophone is a unique subcategory of xylophones in Africa and is identified mainly by the lack of a resonator attachment. Pieces of log or wood, bundles of grass, or banana stems are commonly used to serve as the support frame on which the wooden slats rest. In this stud…

Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) and geostatistical techniques were used to predict diet quality of sub-Saharan African (SSA) livestock, and to create cokriged estimated diet quality maps for cattle across a landscape. Rations of native vegetation were stall-fed to …

The study was a secondary analysis of 56 qualitative interview transcripts of 7 African immigrant families from Ethiopia, Nigeria and Congo with the purpose of exploring their childcare experiences. Using data from the Minnesota Child Care Partnership Research Project, a natural…

The work of contemporary British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE is widely described as theatrical. This characteristic is especially present in the most well-known segment of his practice: his work in three dimensions, which often stages headless mannequins wearing copies o…

This study concerns the search for a stable polity in Africa. Specifically, it investigates the theoretical assumptions concerning the relationship between ethnic differences and military disengagement. The theoretical postulation here seeks to explain that the politicization of…

This dissertation examines the development of narrative form in 19 th century Yiddish and 20th century West African literature. Engaging with the theory of “minor” literature articulated by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, this study adds to their framework for identifying “mi…

Questions of racial and cultural identity have almost become endemic in current Africana, American, cultural and humanistic studies. So too have issues concerning subaltern resistance to, and/or determined self-integration into, dominant cultures. This study has been conceived a…

For years, critics have used Black writers' interweaving of African-derived oral textual features and European written forms to reject the concept of the Great Divide between orality and writing in literacy studies. These critics primarily see the hybridized texts of writers of …