PROPOSAL #1 Code-Meshing the Curriculum: A Student- and Faculty-Centered Framework for Social Justice In a culture that assumes dominant language practices are standards--rather than conventions that change over time as all language does--we struggle in our own writing classrooms to respond to student writers in ways that both value their linguistic background and help them make empowering linguistic choices. This tension may be felt to an even greater extent in writing centers. As writing center practitioners, we hear first-hand accounts from students whose instructors have told them to “sound less Chinese” and “more American,” denying students’ identities and increasing writing anxiety. One undergraduate tutor, motivated by similar anecdotes in her tutoring sessions, conducted a focus group with NOAH students in the 2016-17 academic year. NOAH students reported coming to the writing center looking for support but being made to “feel stupid” by tutors who “talked down” to them about their understanding of English, asking questions like, “do you know what a verb is?” These narratives reflect that racist pedagogies are active within our institution and that their effects are felt by students of color. As we develop our understanding of racist pedagogies within our own writing classrooms and writing center, we feel a particular urgency to address this problem with the wider institution and find ways to promote equity in the teaching of writing across the curriculum. We recognize the institutional demand--and indeed our own conditioning for success in college--to teach students not only to use Standard Academic English (SAE) when culturally appropriate, but to value it above other forms of communication. This move devalues the rich linguistic backgrounds of many of our students and privileges linguistics “whiteness.” Following LeCourt, we believe that “a close examination of how writing across the curriculum has been theorized points to some disturbing possibilities which include the acculturation of students into an already normalized discourses, the reproduction of dominant ideologies that these discourses support, and the silencing of difference." The awareness that SAE impacts the teaching of writing leads us to imagine how we can effectively incorporate language diversity into the curriculum as a response to marginalization. To understand language diversity and how language is racialized further illuminates our understanding of institutional racism and implicit bias in our own practices. Our roles as writing teachers, both in the classroom and in the writing center, increase our awareness of Hofstra students’ language and dialect diversity. These roles also increase our awareness of the hegemonic structures influencing language use within the institution. Higher education--and indeed the world we live in--positions us to unquestionably assume that “Standard English” exists and “is the most proper, sophisticated, and clear way to speak English” (Greenfield 35). But Greenfield points out that these assumptions, and even our attempts to work against them, produce inherently racist pedagogies. The institution positions us, as educators, to simultaneously serve as both advocates for and oppressors of our students, particularly students of color and multilingual students. Discursive practices that only value SAE reinforce ideologies, methodologies, and discourse conventions to empower students to succeed within disciplinary discourse communities, but often do not include the perspectives or address the needs of people of color. We propose a translingual approach as one response to SAE in higher education. Students often get penalized for integrating words from their "home" language, and omit the "counterstory" presented by marginalized groups. While many educators teach students an awareness of code switching to reinforce responsible rhetorical choices as students move between academic and non-academic audiences, scholars of code-meshing would argue that expecting students to code-switch devalues students’ identities while privileging linguistic patterns associated with whiteness. By
combining languages and dialects, one of which is SAE, code-meshing encourages embracing cultural differences, regardless of the rhetorical situation. Code-meshing is consistent with a translingual pedagogical approach in that it “questions language practices [...] even those that appear to conform to dominant standards. [A translingual approach] asks what produces the appearance of conformity, as well as what that appearance might and might not do, for whom and how” (Horner et al 304). By contrast, code-switching forces a speaker to uncritically alter how they speak and therefore how they behave to appease the authority in a certain environment. Although code-meshing as a practice involves a level of critical engagement, risk, and rhetorical skills student writers may find challenging, we posit that questioning the premise of SAE will further students’ involvement in social justice discourse. As educators (and once-students) of an educational system that values SAE, we plan to develop a course that introduces students to the academic discussion of racist language practices and the debate between code-switching and code-meshing, encouraging students to both learn and critique a discourse community’s cannon and conventions. The course will open with an introduction to the linguistic premise that “all spoken languages are equal in linguistic terms” (Lippi-Green 10), working with students to identify both their own language practices and language biases. Taking a cue from Canagarajah’s work “Translingual Writing and Teacher Development in Composition,” students will compose literacy autobiographies to understand the social experiences that construct students’ individual linguistic diversity. The culminating project of this course will be a multimodal performance project where students take ownership of their language in order to express their voice, presence, and identity as a communicator. Ultimately, this course will work towards developing a critical awareness of the social, political, economic and educational issues that impact language usage and instruction. Along with our desire to deliver this content to Hofstra students, there is a need to educate faculty on ways to invite students to bring their whole selves into their disciplines to stimulate selfexpression or to use personal experience as a source of learning or knowledge. We propose hosting a workshop to facilitate a conversation among Hofstra University’s administrators, faculty, and staff to discuss ways to revise our responses to student writing. Like Matsuda, et al., we recognize that professional development around responding to diverse student writers will better position teachers to address students’ needs. In other words, we are advocating for an understanding of teachers’ needs alongside the needs of our students. We want to introduce language diversity to faculty in a way that destigmatizes students, moving away from enacting penalties for integrating nonstandard genres of language, while offering faculty the space to voice their challenges responding to diverse writers. Our workshop will facilitate learning about canons and conventions without requiring absolute conformity. Following our theoretical framing of translingual pedagogy and code-meshing practices, we will offer faculty Vershawn Ashanti Young’s article “Should Writers Use They Own English?”, which is representative of the possibilities of code-meshing in academic discourse. As a large group, we will discuss the ways Young’s text both disorients and invites its audience. Faculty will then move into breakout groups where they will look at examples of student writing that employ code-meshing, collaborating in small groups to devise assignments from their own disciplines. The framework of this workshop addresses the practical and conceptual challenges of enacting pedagogies that encourage language diversity. This Summer Research Grant and subsequent faculty workshop will allow us to develop two co-authored articles. Our timeline for submission will allow us to complete a draft of the first article, with a planned submission to Writing Program Administration (WPA) Journal, which will document our plan for a faculty workshop; upon executing the workshop, we will complete the article with a reflection on the workshop, participants’ reaction to activities, and faculty feedback.
Our longer-term research project involves developing an IRB study of the teacher-student experience in our course. As part of our efforts to enact anti-racist pedagogies and involve student-writers in the processes of understanding language practices within the institution, we plan on collecting and anonymizing student writing from our proposed course to offer both a theoretical lense and practical plan for doing anti-racist work with students. Students would opt in to this study upon the beginning of the semester and will be offered a consent form inviting them to voluntarily and anonymously submit their writing to our research project, for analysis and coding after the semester ends. We will also offer our individual autoethnographic reflections to make meaning of this course. We plan to submit this study of our course on language diversity and code-meshing as a multimodal auto/ethnography to Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture. We believe that the drawing attention to linguistic diversity is in line with the goals of the Center for “Race,” Culture, and Social. By introducing translingual approaches to student writing, and to teaching more broadly, we hope to positively impact faculty and students, alike. We appreciate the consideration of the Advisory Board in reviewing our grant application.
Works Cited Canagarajah, Suresh. “Translingual Writing and teacher development in composition.” College English, vol. 78, no.3 (2016), pp. 265-273. Greenfield, Laura. “The ‘Standard English’ Fairytale: A Rhetorical Analysis of Racist Pedagogies and Commonplace Assumptions about Language Diversity.” Writing Centers and The New Racism, edited by Lauren Greenfield and Karen Rowan, Utah State UP, 2011, pp. 33-60. Horner, Bruce, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, and John Trimbur. “Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach.” College English, vol. 73, no. 3 (2011) pp. 303-321. LeCourt, Donna. “WAC as Critical Pedagogy: The Third Stage?” JAC, vol. 16, no. 3 (1996) pp. 389-405. Lippi-Green, Rosina. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States, 2nd edition, Routledge, 2012. Matsuda, Paul Kei, Tanita Saenkhum, and Steven Accardi. “Writing teachers’ perception of the presence and needs of second-language writers: An institutional case study.” Journal of Second Language Writing, vol. 22 (2013) pp. 68-86. Young, Vershawn Ashanti. “Should Writers Use They Own English?” Writing Centers and The New Racism, edited by Lauren Greenfield and Karen Rowan, Utah State UP, 2011, pp. 61-72.
PROPOSAL #2 Listening to the Souls of Black Folk, Hearing the Spirit of America W.E.B. Du Bois and the project of Cultural Education A proposal submitted to The Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice (Hofstra University) Faculty Summer Research Grant 2021 Project Overview The most widely known and cited moment from W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk occurs at the very beginning, in the first paragraph of The Forethought, when he asserts, “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” (Du Bois, 1903/2003, 3) Few who cite this classic line discuss the context from which it is asserted. And still fewer appear to have recognized and taken up what Du Bois points to as the principal source for engaging the problem of race, which has inevitably moved into the Twenty First Century. First, it is important to recognize that when identifying the problem of race at the beginning of Souls Du Bois is interpolating the wider ‘educated’ class of Americans into the existential problem that he and his fellow African-Americans are compelled to take up, what he calls “the strange meaning of being black.”(ibid) “This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader,” he says, and in doing so incorporates this wider, mostly white, audience into the problem of race. Du Bois is inviting this wider audience to join in “studying my words with me...seeking the grain of truth hidden there…” as he presents “the spiritual world in which ten thousand Americans live and strive.”(ibid) He invites his readers to move with him within the Veil that marks the threshold of the color-line so that they might experience “the meaning of its religion, the passion of it, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls.”(ibid) And he invites them to experience how the “strange meaning of being black” in America has been expressed to America through the “greatest gift.” Second, with this line of interpretation it is important to understand how the problem of race -- the color line -has been negotiated via art through the sublimation of the rage and despair brought on by the brutality and violence of racism. For Du Bois, the “strange meaning of being black” is revealed principally in music, specifically the spirituals, which are the focus of the final chapter of Souls. The spirituals serve as the primary way of setting the mood for his Gentle Readers, compelling them to hear the souls of black folk by placing bars of music from a spiritual as the epigraph for each chapter of Souls. “And so before each thought that I have written in this book,” he tells us at the beginning of the final chapter, “I have set a phrase, a haunting echo of these weird old songs in which the soul of the black slave spoke to humanity. Ever since I was a child these songs have stirred me strangely.”(Du Bois, 177) Again, interpolating his wider audience into his existential modality, Du Bois insists that the strange stirring he experienced, a resonance of “the strange meaning of being
black” in America, is in fact a modality that all Americans can experience, because “by fateful change the Negro folk-song -- the rhythmic cry of the slave -- stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side of the seas.”(Du Bois, 178) The spirituals, Du Bois insists, remain “the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people.”(ibid) Project Particulars The project I am proposing begins with and is rooted in Du Bois’ Souls and the thesis that in order to engage the problem of race in America we must resolve what Du Bois describes as the neglect toward and misunderstanding of that most original American music, which is to say, we must resolve to recognize our American cultural inheritance by studying the spirituals and their legacy in the blues and jazz. This project is fundamentally an educational project, or a project of cultural education, a project of engaging students in hearing the souls of black folk and thereby listening to the spirit of America. It is aesthetic education by way of originarymusic. (Duarte, 2021) My project got underway this current winter/spring 2021 semester in my Introduction to Philosophy of Education course. While the study of Du Bois has been part of the course for the better part of two decades, I entered this academic year with a feeling of urgency to meet the moment of racial reckoning in America, what many are describing as another great awakening of conscience. I say “another” because these events and shifts seem to happen in cycles, as noted recently by the playwright Jeremy O. Harris. (Harris, 2021) The urgency to expand the study of Du Bois by pursuing the trajectory of his thesis about the spirituals was also propelled by the 2020 release of Wynton Marsalis’ composition The Ever Fonky Lowdown, performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (Marsalis, 2020), and the 2020 film adaptation of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. (Wilson, 1985; Santiago-Hudson and Wolf, 2020) These works, along with James Cone’s The Spirituals and the Blues (Cone, 1972/1991) and Henry Louis Gates’ documentary The Black Church (Gates, 2020), have enabled my students this semester to explore more deeply the significance Du Bois’ thesis regarding the spirituals as the greatest gift offered by African-Americans to the nation and the world. Going further and tracing the legacy of the spirituals and blues in jazz, my students' study of Marsalis’ composition The Ever Fonky Lowdown has enabled them to recognize what Eddie Glaude describes as “fundamental truths about the American project.” (Glaude, 2020) For Glaude, Marsalis’ work offers a deeply provocative cultural critique, part of a tradition of “searing commentary on the contradictions of American democracy, especially when it comes to race,” a tradition of critique that nevertheless maintains “an unshakable faith in its ideals.” The composition, along with Marsalis’ more recent Democracy Suite (Marsalis, 2021), has been studied in the same hermeneutic manner that we take up the spirituals and the blues, with equal emphasis placed on an authentic experience with the music (as heard in recordings), going for what Maxine Greene (2001) calls “faithful perception” of the work of art. Coupled with that is the study of the
provocative lyrics and spoken word in The Ever Fonky Lowdown, exploring the same “doublevoicedness” (Darden, 2014, 14) we encounter in the spirituals. This same methodology of aesthetic education and existential philosophy will be used when we turn next and finally this semester to the cultural wave of free jazz, a peak moment in the epic movement of the spirituals and the unfolding of liberation through music. (Jones, 1968/2010; Wilmer, 1977/2018) Towards Learning New Methodology of Philosophical Learning By tracing the legacy of that gift in the blues and jazz and their role in defining the spirit of America, my students have come to learn about and experience first hand the formative aesthetic education that happens when, as James Cone puts it, one encounters these art forms in a fulsome way that amplifies our ‘academic’ learning by demanding that we “feel the Spirit; that is, one must feel one’s way into the power of black music; responding both to its rhythm and the faith in experience it affirms.”(Cone, 4) Indeed, the study of the spirituals, blues and jazz introduces them to an alternative way of philosophical practice and study, especially when approaching the blues as the “result of thought,” (Jones, 1963) as a way of doing philosophy. They learn from August Wilson, through the voice of Ma Rainey, that the blues are indeed a form of thinking, an existential philosophy that is working out the strange meaning of being black in America: “You sing ‘cause that a way of understanding life,” Ma Rainey says. She adds, “Something’s been added by that song. This be an empty world without the blues. I take that emptiness and try to fill it up with something….I ain’t started the blues way of singing. The blues always been here.”(Wilson, 82 & 83) The blues have indeed always been here, in this nation, America, the existential condition marked by the complexity and contradictions of our democracy. To listen to the blues is to hear and thereby understand the truth of the American spirit, for better and for worse. If, as Du Bois puts it, “through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope -- a faith in the ultimate justice of things, (Du Bois, 186), that is because the spirituals, like the blues, and then jazz, are an affirmation of black life in America, and thus, an affirmation that America holds more promise than its history and legacy of denial would have us believe. From this music we hear the confirmation of that ‘strange meaning’ as hope and faith in justice and freedom revealed through what Cone calls “the achievement of being” by a blues people who “attain authentic experience” by “acceptance of the real as disclosed in concrete human affairs.” (Cone, 113) In the course of our study of the spirituals, and then the blues and jazz, my students have encountered an entirely unique form of educational philosophy, one that offers them a cultural education through music. In this course of study they have been placed in the holistic and embodied philosophical modality of sentipensar (feeling-thinking): “The ontological sentipensar, as a research method, requires the non-pretentious facticity of the encounter with others, listening...learning with humility from...the popular wisdom, paying attention respectfully to their saying (Cepeda, 2017, 17). My students have learned through philosophical modality that renders the truth of lived experience, inviting them to feel the spirit that is moving in and through this music, to feel-think the strange stirring that Du Bois describes. As James Cone puts it, “the blues are existential; that is, they assume
that reality is inherent in historical existence and not in abstract essence...The blues do not speak about abstract humanity but about particular men and women who encounter the trials and tribulations of human existence.” (Cone, 112-113)
Research Goals: 1) Summer 2021 I will review all new lectures recorded this term (approximately 30 hrs), transcribing key moments. 2) Academic year 2021-22 will submit paper(s) to Journal of Aesthetic Education, and Studies in Philosophy of Education. I also intend to present the project at national and international conferences, including the American Educational Studies Association, the Northeast Philosophy of Education Society, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Popular Culture Association. 3) Summer 2022 submit book proposal. Plans for Curricular Development: 1) This month (April 2021) I will propose this course of study as a First Year Seminar for Spring 2022. 2) In academic year 2021-22 I will again include much of this material in my Introduction to Philosophy of Education sections, with special attention on the new methodology of philosophical learning that combines existential and aesthetic education with critical cultural studies. 3) Ultimately, I will propose a new UG course in SOE that would carry liberal arts credits and fulfill 3ssh in the HCLAS Distribution Requirements, under the Cross Cultural (CC) Interdisciplinary/Other category.
Bibliography Cepeda, Juan (2017) “The Problem of Being in Latin American: Approaching the Latin American Ontological Sentipensar.” Journal of World Philosophies(Summer): 12–27 Cone, James (1972/1991) The Spirituals and the Blues (Maryknoll: Orbis Books) Darden, Robert (2014) Nothing But Love in God’s Water vol 1: Black Sacred Music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement (University Park: Penn State University Press)
Duarte, Eduardo (2021) “On Becoming Musical,” an invited seminar paper presentation to the Philosophy of Education programme, Institute of Education, University College London, February 24th) Du Bois, W.E.B. (1903/2003) The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Barnes and Noble) Gates, Henry Louis (2021) The Black Church: This is Our Story, This is Our Song (McGee Media, Inkwell Films) Glaude, Eddie (2020) “Liner Notes,” The Ever Fonky Lowdown (New York: Jazz at Lincoln Center) Greene, Maxine (2001) Variations on a Blue Guitar (New York: Teachers College Press) Harris, Jeremy O. (2021) “New Yorker Live: Amanda Gorman and Jeremy O. Harris with Lauren Michele Jackson,” (New York: New Yorker Live Events, March 28th) Jones, Le Roi [Amiri Baraka] (1963/1999) Blues People (New York: Quill) Jones, Le Roi [Amiri Baraka] (1968/2010) Black Music (New York: Akashi Classics) Marsalis, Wynton (2020) The Ever Fonky Lowdown (New York: Jazz at Lincoln Center) Marsalis, Wynton (2021) Democracy Suite (New York: Jazz at Lincoln Center) Santiago-Hudson, Ruben and Wolfe, George C. (2020) Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix films) Wilmer, Val (1977/2018) As Serious as Your Life: Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution, 1957-1977 (London: Serpent’s Tail) Wilson, August (1985) Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (New York: Penguin)
PROPOSAL #3 MAROONS IN THE AMERICAS
a. A project description, highlighting relevance for questions of race or social justice. This project will be an historical and comparative examination of Maroons -- escaped New World mine and plantation slaves who had been removed and brought to the Americas from a wide range of African societies -- and their subsequent creation of syncretic, masterless communities in the forests, swamps and wilderness of Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanophone, and Lusophone speaking colonial societies in all of the Americas. Using multiple country comparisons, archival materials, primary documents, scholarly publications, and original research, the Project will seek to emphasize and demonstrate that Maroon Communities were much more wide-spread and long-term than has been previously described; and that they were not merely groups of Africans who retained their Old World African cultures, but out of necessity and the diversity of their Old World African traditions, were compelled to create and develop new languages, new religions, new social hierarchies and new polities which, as a result, gave birth to a New World African American culture. Throughout the Americas, there are still parts of the African American slave experience which are at the crossroads of faith and history, and which demand further exploration and updating. I am referring both to the evolution of a New World African American culture of those Maroon societies and to Islam. Both played powerful and frequently overlapping roles in freeing slaves from bondage, adapting and developing Old World African institutions to New World realities; in forging new languages, new political institutions, as well as creating amalgams of aesthetics, faith, communal and interpersonal relations. With time and persistence, Maroon communities throughout the
Americas became centers of resistance, not only to their slaveholding masters, but ultimately as the core of anti-colonial liberation struggles against their colonial European masters. The Islamic faith of rebellious slaves is still an almost invisible part of the discussion of African resistance to slavery in the Americas. This disappearance is at once bewildering and understandable. Since Islam had expanded and penetrated the sub-Saharan western African nations centuries before all of the Atlantic slave populations were forcibly removed and shipped to the Americas from that region of the African continent, it is impossible, that their Islamic faith simply vanished during the Middle Passage from Africa to the New World. However, at the same time, it is understandable that in the Baptist, Catholic and Protestant worlds of their slave masters, it would have been problematic at best for slaves to maintain the five principles of Islam and remain observant Muslims. The obstacles were formidable. Over time, only shards of open affirmation and faithful observance would have remained as new syncretic Christian faiths incorporated Islamic rites, beliefs and observances; and as the slaves’ written and spoken Arabic became simplified and deformed, it blended with the New World languages of the Master class, or disappeared completely. Maroon itself is a loan word borrowed from the Spanish, cimarrón, which in turn is a corrupted appropriation from the Arawakspeaking Taino Native Americans of the Caribbean. In its Spanish language usage, it meant fugitive or wild -- first applied to animals and then to humans. In its original Arawak usage, as símara, it meant both an arrow that wildly missed its mark or a wild animal. The Spaniards added the suffix arrón, connoting something disproportionately large, disagreeable, or even violent such as the Spanish words fanfarrón (braggart), testarrón (pig headed) or vozarrón (a loud disagreeable voice). Spanish Colonial authorities then used that neologism in their correspondence with the Spanish
Majesties and Authorities to describe native peoples and slaves who had escaped from the mines and plantations to live masterless lives in the wild. Slave masters in North America and the English-speaking Caribbean then shortened that twice-loaned word to Maroon and used it to name escaped slaves. Unlike the short-lived acts of open- armed slave rebellions like those led by among others, Charles Deslondes, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner in the American south, rebellions in the Caribbean and South America led by Maroon communities commanded by Queen Nanny and Cudjoe in Jamaica, Andresote in Venezuela, Yanga in Mexico, Zumbi in Brazil, Coffij in the Berbice region of modern-day Guyana, or Boni in Surinam and French Guyana were wide-spread and their resistance persistent and enduring. Regarding North American slave societies, what if Harriet Tubman’s heroic resistance to slavery had been as the leader of a rebellious community of Maroons and not as a resourceful and courageous individual rescuing slaves? What if instead of leading slaves north to free states and into a masterless life, albeit on the margins of the wider white society, she had led them into the “bush,” remote mountain hideaways, swamps, or south to México to establish settlements of escaped slaves - Maroon communities? What if those safe havens continuously served as communal refuges of freedom for those who escaped enslavement? What if she and her Maroon companions upon meeting, had greeted each other with the salutation “Sala malecú,” a by-then 19th century corrupted form of the traditional Islamic greeting As-salamu alaykum (Peace be upon you). If Harriet Tubman had been that Maroon leader, she and her fellow escapees could have not only endured and survived, but could have recast the vicissitudes of maroonage into a new, distinctive African culture in America.
In fact, in Harriet Tubman’s North America, there were Maroon communities almost from the moment slaves arrived. These Africans settled in geographically isolated and seemingly inhospitable territories like the Dismal Swamp between Virginia and North Carolina, in South Carolina’s Low Country, in the Belle Isle swamps south of Savannah, Georgia, in Spanish Florida, or in the boggy bayou lands surrounding Louisiana’s Bas du Fleuve southeast of New Orleans. Generations of escaped slaves were born and died in Maroon communities until slavery ended. These African Creoles, children of Africans, born in the Americas of African parentage are the originators of a New World African American culture, rather than simply the retainers of Old World African culture in the Americas. So, while surviving the never-ending threats posed by slave catchers and watchmen was of singular concern for the masterless communities of Maroons, mastering how to feed and defend themselves and, at the same time, create a singular Maroon society of peoples from culturally diverse African ethnicities speaking mutually unintelligible languages, was to forge a new identity--an acculturated African identity made in America. Maroon resistance to slavery in the Americas was long lasting and geographically widespread. Those communities and their defiance of oppression are a crucial part of the universal collective refusal of slaves to accept their circumstances. Further, the role of Maroon communities in the creation and affirmation of a New World African identity and personhood and its part in a blending, reshaping, and fusing of diverse sub-Saharan African Islam into a new culture cannot be underestimated.
b) An explanation of how the project will lead to a new undergraduate or graduate course, or enrich an existing course. It is my expectation that once the research project is completed, I will create a 15-week curriculum based on that research and submit it to the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, as well as the Spanish program for possible inclusion in regular undergraduate offerings. Here is what a tentative syllabus for such a course might include: WESTERN AFRICAN ORIGINS OF SLAVE TRADE HETEROGENITY OF AFRICAN SLAVES IN THE AMERICAS ISLAM IN WESTERN AFRICA’S SLAVE COAST CONTRAST BETWEEN EUROPEAN COLONIAL AND AFRICAN SLAVE CULTURES CHARACTERISTICS OF PLANTATION CAPITALISM PIDGINS AND CREOLE LANGUAGES OF NEW WORLD AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURE ISLAMIC SURVIVAL IN AFRICAN-DERIVED RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICAS: CANDOMBLE, SANTERIA, AND VODUN MAROON COMMUNITIES IN SPANISH AMERICA: Mexico Caribbean, Central America, South America MAROON COMMUNITIES IN THE FRENCH CARIBBEAN The Black Carib Wars HAITI: A Maroon Nation JAMAICA: Captain Cudjoe
Queen Nanny 1738 Peace Treaty between Jamaican Maroons and the British Crown THE GUIANAS: The 1763 Berbice Uprising The Boni Wars (1771-1793) John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative of a Five-Year Expedition Against the Revolted Negros of Surinam (1790) BRAZIL: Quilombo dos Palmares The 1835 Muslim Uprising in Bahia THE UNITED STATES: Bas du Fleuve , Louisiana Belle Isle Swamps, Georgia Spanish Florida The Dismal Swamp (Virginia/North Carolina)
c) Plans for publication, production or dissemination. When the writing of the project is completed, I plan to submit it to the Journal of Intercultural Disciplines. I also plan to apply for speaking engagements at Hofstra University’s Center for Race Culture and Social Justice’s monthly Colloquia Series, as well as to the African American Speakers Bureau, The African Diaspora Development Institute, The Museum of Contemporary Diasporan Arts, The Institute for Research in
African American Studies, as well as to local and regional universities and high schools especially during Black History Month. BIBLIOGRAPHY(ENGLISH LANGUAGE) Aptheker, Herbert. Maroons Within the Present Limits of the United States Barnes, Sandra T. Africa’s OGUN. Old World and New Barnet, Miguel. The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave Bilby, Kenneth M. True-Born Maroons Brown, Vincent. Tacky’s Revolt Charún-Illescas, Lucia. Malambo Craton, Michael. Testing the Chains D’Salete. ANGOLA JANGA(Kingdom of Runaway Slaves) Dious, Sylviane A. Servants of Allah Elkins, Stanley. A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life Equiano, Olaudah. The Life of Olaudah Equianao Gates, Henry Luis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey Gimlette, John. Wild Coast Gonzalez, Johnhenry. Maroon Nation Gonzalez, Nancie L. Sojourners of the Caribbean Gottlieb, Karla. A History of Queen Nanny: The Mother of Us All Hoogbergen, Wim. The Boni Maroon Wars of Suriname James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins
Kars, Marjoleine. Blood on the River Klein, Herbert S. Slavery in the Americas Mintz, Sidney and Price, Richard. The Birth of African American Culture Mullin, Gerald W. Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth Century Virginia Patterson, Orlando. The Sociology of Slavery Price, Richard. Maroon Societies Reis, João José. Slave Rebellion in Brazil Restall, Matthew. The Black Middle Robinson, Carey. The Fighting Maroons of Jamaica Sayers, Daniel, O. A Desolate Place for a Defiant People Scott, Julius S. The Common Wind Selected English-language bibliography on Maroons in the Americas Shephard, Charles. An Historical Account of the Island of Saint Vincent Slavery’s Exiles Stedman, John Gabriel. Narrative of a Five-Year Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam Synott, Anthony. Slave Revolts in Guyana and Trinidad Taylor, Christopher. The Black Carib Wars BIBLIOGRAPHY (French, Portuguese and Spanish)
Arrom, José Juan. Cimarrón: Apuntes sobre sus primeras documentaciones y su probable orígen Baralt, Guillermo A. Esclavos rebeldes: Conspiraciones y sublevaciones de esclavos en Puerto Rico(1795-1873) Borrego, Plá. María del Carmen. Palenque de negros en Cartagena de Indias a fines del siglo XVII Brazil, Etienne Ignace. Os Malês De Friedemann, Nina S. Lengua y sociedad en el Palenque de San Basilio Deive, Carlos Esteban. La esclavitud del negro en Santo Domingo(1492-1844) Deschamps, Chapeaux Pedro. Los cimarrones urbanos Duarte, Abelardo. Negros muçulmanes nas Alagoas(os Malês) Elbein dos Santos. Palmares 300 años: Memorias y estrategias comunitarias Freitas, Décio. Palmares: a Guerra dos escravos Garcia, Jesús. Esclavos negros, cimarrones y cumbes en Barlovento García, Salazar Juan. Cimarronaje en el Pacífico sur: historia y tradición Guillot, Carlos Federico. Negros rebeldes y negros cimarrones Henry, A. La Guyana française: son histoire 1604-1946 Hurault, Jean.Les Noirs Refugies Boni de la Guyane Franaçiase Larrazal Blanco, Carlos. Los negros y la esclavitud en Santo Domingo Magallanes, Manuel Vicente. Luchas e insurreciones en la Venezuela colonial
Maglia, Graciela and Schwegler, Armin. Palenque:Colombia Oralidad, identidad y Resistencia Monteil, Vicent. Anályse de 25 documents árabes de Malês de Bahia(1835) Navarrete, María Cristina. Historia social del negro en la colonia Cartagena siglo XVII Nistal-Moret, Benjamín. El cimarron, 1845 Schwegler, Armin. Chi ma nkongo: lengua y rito ancestrales de El Palenque de San Basilio
PROPOSAL #4 Understanding the Effect of Workplace Ostracism among Minority Employees: The Role of Raced-Based and Performance-Based Attributions Promoting workplace inclusion and attaining employee well-being are important tasks of business leaders. One subtle yet common workplace mistreatment is workplace ostracism, which refers to the extent to which an organizational member is excluded or ignored by other people at work when it is socially appropriate to include (Robinson, O’Reilly, & Wang, 2013). Although the U.S. workforce is becoming increasingly diverse with only approximately 63% being White Americans (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Division of Labor Force Statistics, 2018), little is known about to what degree employees’ racial background may affect their perception and reaction to workplace ostracism. Due to people’s fundamental need to belong, ostracized individuals may act pro-socially toward other people in order to be re-included. However, research on workplace ostracism and prosocial behaviors has produced mixed findings (Zhou, Che, & Rainone, 2021). Since emotions are strong motivators for specific behaviors (Tracy & Robins, 2007), the major purpose of the current project is to investigate when and how ostracized minority employees will act prosocially toward either the ostracism instigator or other people at work from emotional perspective. Minority employees’ causal attributions will affect how they perceive and evaluate ostracism treatments from others at work (Liu, Liao, & Loi, 2012). On the one hand, research has shown that race/ethnicity-related stereotypes and outgroup perceptions make minority members the target of direct or indirect mistreatment, prejudice, discrimination, or ostracism, which can all communicate social rejections based on one’s membership devalued in a society (Cortina, KabatFarr, Magley, & Nelson, 2017; Steele, 1997). A history of being rejected based on one’s race could lead to one’s doubt about if he/she is accepted by the majority members (Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999). Therefore, people in minority racial groups (e.g., African Americans, Hispanic/Latinx Americans, Asian Americans, etc.) may develop race-based attributions of workplace ostracism. When minority employees view the ostracism instigator’s motive as causing harm due to their minority background, workplace ostracism will lead to anger toward the instigator and fear of being excluded at the workplace. The ostracized employee may ruminate on the unfortunate matter, replay the emotionally disturbing episode over and over, and feel more threatened and afraid (Liang, Hanig, Evans, Brown, & Lian, 2018). Fear has been identified as a primary emotional reaction to workplace mistreatment (Porath & Pearson, 2012). Thus, we predict race-based attribution tendency moderates/exacerbates the relationship between workplace ostracism and employee fear (H1). On the other hand, when employees have general attribution tendency to ascribe the ostracism instigator’s intention to improve poor performance, workplace ostracism will lead to an increase in self-blame and guilt (Tracy & Robins, 2006). With performance-promotion attribution tendency, ostracized employees will focus on their poor performance as the causal
agent of coworker ostracism. According to the Emotional System model (Roseman, 2013), these internal attributions (i.e., blaming self) are more likely to elicit self-conscious emotions, such as guilt. Thus we predict performance-promotion attribution tendency moderates/exacerbate relationship between workplace ostracism and employee guilt (H1b). Fear is the basic emotions that drives safety-seeking behaviors. After being ostracized by one’s coworker, fear invokes strong action tendencies to run away from danger. They will seek relational safety by interacting with trusted others at work. One type of safety-orientated interpersonal behavior is prevention-oriented relationship crafting, which refers to interpersonal behaviors toward trusted relationships at work (Bindl, Unsworth, Gibson, & Stride, 2019). With fear elicited by workplace ostracism, the victimized employee will modify his/her work relationships to interact with people they get along with. They aim to deepen relationships with valuable colleagues in order to satisfy their belongingness need. Therefore, we predict workplace ostracism has indirect effect on prevention-oriented relationship crafting via fear (H2a). Guilt has potential to drive prosocial and reparative actions toward the instigator (Roseman, 2013). It has been linked to prosocial and reparative behaviors (Tangney & Dearing, 2002). According to Bolino, Kacmar, Turnley, and Gilstrap (2008), employees can engage in both self-promotion and ingratiation to impress other people. If employees attribute workplace ostracism to their poor performance, they may engage in self-promotion to communicate their abilities and competence to their coworkers. If employees interpret the instigator’s motive as performance promotion, they will sense this motive as aligned with their own long-term career goal. Thus, they are likely to legitimize workplace ostracism, and are inclined to ingratiate the ostracizer. Wu, Kwan, Liu, and Lee (2020) found that workplace ostracism positively predicted favor rending when one’s self-monitoring was high. Thus, we predict workplace ostracism has indirect effect on supervisor-focused impression management (self-promotion and ingratiation) via guilt (H2b). We will using the experience sampling method (ESM) to collect daily diary data in 10 workdays. Since employees’ perceptions of workplace ostracism, emotions, and prosocial behaviors vary from day to day, collecting and examining the daily data will help us understand the intrapersonal changes on these variables. Method Participants and Procedures We will collect the daily diary data using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). We will recruit fulltime employees with minority racial/ethnical backgrounds. We will compile the survey and upload it to Qualtrics – an on-line survey tool. The general survey includes measures for demographic variables, individual difference variables (race-based and performancepromotion attribution tendency) and control variables (interactional justice, anger, and anxiety). The general survey will also include the baseline measures of workplace ostracism, fear, guilt, self-promotion, ingratiation, and prevention-oriented relationship crafting. On the daily surveys, we will add “Today” to the items to reflect the daily measure. One-week later, employees will fill out daily surveys for 10 workdays.
Measures For all the measures, response choice will range from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree), unless further noted. Workplace ostracism will be measured with the five items from the Workplace Ostracism Scale (Ferris, Brown, Berry, & Lian, 2008). Race-based and performancepromotion attribution tendency will be measured with 10 questions (five questions performancepromotion and five questions for race-based) about their general attribution tendency of the causal motives of workplace ostracism (Liu et al., 2012). Fear and guilt will be assessed using eight items from the fear and guilt subscale of the Positive and Negative Affect ScheduleExpanded Form (PANAS-X) (Watson & Clark, 1994). Self-promotion and ingratiation will be assessed using eight items by Bolino and Turnley (1999). Prevention-oriented relationship crafting will be assessed using the subscale of prevention-oriented relationship crafting by Bindl et al. (2019). Control variables. We will control interpersonal justice, anxiety, and anger in the analysis (Liu, 2019). Interpersonal justice will be measured by four items by Bies and Moag (1986). Anger and anxiety will be measured with seven items by Caplan, Cobb, French, Van Harrison, and Pinneau (1975). An explanation of how the project will lead to a new undergraduate or graduate course, or enrich an existing course This project will help largely enrich an existing course of PSY 296: Occupational Health Psychology. This class is designed to apply psychology at the workplace to improve employees’ health and wellbeing. I plan to enrich the class with more sections on workplace health among minority employees. Specifically, I will include topics such as job stressors (e.g., workplace ostracism) faced by minority employees, their emotional and physical reactions to job stressors, minority employees’ coping strategies, minority employees’ social categorization and identity at the workplace, and their career development. The current study will largely contribute to the enrichment of the course of Occupational Health Psychology by including sections on occupational health for special populations. Plans for publication, production or dissemination. I will submit the results to national conferences, such as the annual convention of American Psychological Association (APA) in July 2022 and the annual conference of Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology (SIOP) in April 2022. I will work on the journal submission reporting the results. The target journals are Psychological Science, Applied Psychology: An International Review, and Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. References Bies, R. J., & Moag, J. S. (1986). Interactional justice: Communication criteria of fairness. Research on negotiation in organizations, 1, 43-55. Bindl, U. K., Unsworth, K. L., Gibson, C. B., & Stride, C. B. (2019). Job crafting revisited: Implications of an extended framework for active changes at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(5), 605-628. doi:10.1037/apl0000362
Bolino, M. C., Kacmar, K. M., Turnley, W. H., & Gilstrap, J. B. (2008). A multi-level review of impression management motives and behaviors. Journal of Management, 34(6), 10801109. Bolino, M. C., & Turnley, W. H. (1999). Measuring impression management in organizations: A scale development based on the Jones and Pittman taxonomy. Organizational Research Methods, 2(2), 187-206. doi:10.1177/109442819922005 Branscombe, N. R., Schmitt, M. T., & Harvey, R. D. (1999). Perceiving pervasive discrimination among African Americans: Implications for group identification and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(1), 135-149. Caplan, R. D., Cobb, S., French, J. R. P., Van Harrison, R., & Pinneau, S. R. (1975). Job demands and worker health: Main effects and occupational differences. U.S. Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare. HEW Publ. No. (NIOSH) 75-160. Cortina, L. M., Kabat-Farr, D., Magley, V. J., & Nelson, K. (2017). Researching rudeness: The past, present, and future of the science of incivility. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 22(3), 299-313. Ferris, D. L., Brown, D. J., Berry, J. W., & Lian, H. (2008). The development and validation of the Workplace Ostracism Scale. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(6), 1348-1366. doi:10.1037/a0012743 Liang, L. H., Hanig, S., Evans, R., Brown, D. J., & Lian, H. (2018). Why is your boss making you sick? A longitudinal investigation modeling time‐lagged relations between abusive supervision and employee physical health. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 39(9), 1050-1065. Liu, C. (2019). Ostracism, attributions, and their relationships with international students' and employees' outcomes: The moderating effect of perceived harming intent. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology(24), 556-571. doi:10.1037/ocp0000130 Liu, D., Liao, H., & Loi, R. (2012). The dark side of leadership: A three-level investigation of the cascading effect of abusive supervision on employee creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 55(5), 1187-1212. doi:10.5465/amj.2010.0400 Porath, C. L., & Pearson, C. M. (2012). Emotional and behavioral responses to workplace incivility and the impact of hierarchical status. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 42, 326-357. Robinson, S. L., O’Reilly, J., & Wang, W. (2013). Invisible at work: An integrated model of workplace ostracism. Journal of Management, 39(1), 203-231. doi:10.1177/0149206312466141 Roseman, I. J. (2013). Appraisal in the emotion system: Coherence in strategies for coping. Emotion Review, 5(2), 141-149. doi:10.1177/1754073912469591 Simon, L. S., Hurst, C., Kelley, K., & Judge, T. A. (2015). Understanding cycles of abuse: A multimotive approach. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(6), 1798-1810. Steele, C. M. (1997). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape the intellectual identities and performance of women and African Americans. American Psychologist, 52(6), 613–629. Tangney, J. P., & Dearing, R. L. (2002). Shame and guilt. New York, NY: Guilford. Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2006). Appraisal antecedents of shame and guilt: Support for a theoretical model. Personality and social psychology bulletin, 32(10), 1339-1351. doi:10.1177/0146167206290212 Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2007). Emerging insights into the nature and function of pride. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(3), 147-150.
Watson, D., & Clark, L. A. (1994). The PANAS-X: Manual for the positive and negative affect schedule—Expanded form. In. Ames: The University of Iowa. Wu, C. H., Kwan, H. K., Liu, J., & Lee, C. (2020). When and how favour rendering ameliorates workplace ostracism over time: Moderating effect of self‐monitoring and mediating effect of popularity enhancement. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, advanced online publication. doi:10.1111/joop.12328 Zhou, Z. E., Che, X., & Rainone, N. A. (2021). Workplace ostracism and employee prosocial and antisocial organizational behaviors. In C. Liu & J. Ma (Eds.), Workplace ostracism: Its nature, antecedents, and consequences (pp. 133-158). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.