The author argues that Black female figures disrupt the normative constructions of genre and gender in narrative-based costumed pretend play and turns body spectatorship into new narratives of speculation. For Black women at play, she asserts, cosplay (i.e., comic book and pop culture costume play) and masquerade (i.e., as during Caribbean…

This study explores a psychosocial concept coined by the author referred to as "Urban Critical Literacy" (UCL). UCL is an emergent four-step strategy employed by five African American young men as they navigated their cultural worlds of home and school in an urban setting. Critical literacy is the theoretical conceptual framework that…

School dress codes have been making news as students speak out about the ways the standards appear to them to be unfair, particularly to girls and Black males. Girls' clothing choices are singled out for being overly revealing and a distraction to boys, while Black males' choices are perceived as being associated with criminality. The authors…

Tis paper examines the language, literacies, communicative, and rhetorical practices of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The work pays attention to the communication practices of the BLM and Hip Hop generation in its extension of Black and African American language traditions and prior liberation movements in their unapologetic performance…

The history of Columbus, Georgia, cannot be separated from that of the local textile mills; the mills were important in defining the economic success, the social struggles, and the enduring legacy of southern industrial tycoons. Evidence of this industrial past can be seen on almost every street, school, and business located in the city along the…

Many young children pass through a stage of gender appearance rigidity; girls insist on wearing dresses, often pink and frilly, whereas boys refuse to wear anything with a hint of femininity. In 2 studies, we investigated the prevalence of this apparent hallmark of early gender development and its relation to children's growing identification with…

The primary research question in this study was whether adolescents' experiences of and responses to teasing were related to the content of a tease and to particular ethnicity. Caucasian (n = 27) and African American adolescents (n = 22) between 12 to 17 years of age were asked to write about an experience of being teased regarding an aspect of…

In the biennium 1926-1928 the three hundredth anniversary of the founding of modern physiology was celebrated. A tercentenary is an exceedingly small fraction of the time since man discovered the use of fire, invented clothes and houses, and began to huddle together under conditions which have rendered knowledge of hygiene imperative to his…