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Department of Gender and Race Studies

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Browsing Department of Gender and Race Studies by Author "Boylorn, Robin"

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    Black enough
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2019) Hill, Jahman Ariel; McKnight, Utz; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    It is April. My thesis is due in less than a week, and I am sitting with my director, Eric Marable, Jr., and Fox News 6 anchor, Kelsey Davis, in the Fox 6 newsroom. As we sit there, three Black folks discussing a show by and for Black people, on local television, live, I can’t stop smiling. The next day, watching the clip online, I start crying. As a kid growing up in Kansas, I had never seen that before on the local news: Blackness, and nothing else. As a show, Black Enough aims to avoid definitions. I wanted to create something that couldn’t really be pinned down as one thing doing one thing. But, if I could capture the essence of Black Enough in a moment, it would the feeling of watching people who looked like me on TV, Flourishing. The message of my thesis, my one man show, Black Enough, is simple: Black people, you are enough. But getting to that message was not easy. This thesis is a culmination of years of study and input from a countless number of individuals, especially my creative team. As stated in the very first scene of the show, the main question motivating this thesis is how can we use performance to reimagine Blackness as the Flourish, or infinite possibility. The thesis will not seek to answer the question, but instead attempt to find its own way to perform Blackness as the Flourish.
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    Growing up single: lives of adult daughters of black single mothers, an ethnographic collective case study
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2019) Hartley, Jameka Y.; Nelson-Gardell, Debra; McKnight, Utz; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    Research on single mothers is abundant but research on their adult children is limited. Most research on single mothers and their children focuses on the children as minors and not on outcomes once they reach adulthood. Currently we do not know the full landscape of single motherhood beyond the stereotypical (re)presentation of single motherhood. (Re)presentations of single motherhood in both academic literature and the media are often depicted as single, poor, and Black or any races other than White (Bermudez et al., 2014; Kreager et al., 2010; Rowlingson & McKay, 2005; Edin & Kefalas, 2005; Feasey, 2013). Using multiple qualitative methods, I am exploring how perceptions and stereotypes of Black women and Black single mothers, in particular, affect the lived experiences and quality of life for Black daughters who were raised by Black mothers. The rationale for my study lies in the potential, through (re)presentation, to illuminate the lives of the adult children of mother who do not fit the stereotypical mold. Expanding the (re)presentation of Black single motherhood is important because it increases empathy for both mothers and their children, at any age. It also reduces the stigma surrounding mothering alone and dispels stereotypes. My dissertation is an ethnographic collective case study with embedded units. According to Goddard (2010), a collective case study involves more than one case, which may or may not be physically co-located with other cases. I have eight cases in my case study including one sibling group. Methods in my study, including interactive interviews, a focus group, and film analysis highlighting Black single mothers and daughters. As a Black woman raised in a mother led home of a single Black woman, I found that neither I nor my mother was represented in the current research landscape. This absence was the impetus for my dissertation. My dissertation explores existing themes of Black motherhood and reinterprets those themes through the use of narrative. Using narrative allows me to shift the stigma paradigm that surrounds the (re)presentation of Black single mothers and their children.