The Collegiate Black Space: Black College Students’ Use of New Counter-Spaces for Support, Knowledge Production, and Organizing for Activism

Black collegians who attend historically white institutions continue to struggle with racism, microaggressions, feelings of alienation, minimal or improper advising, and an undue pressure to prove themselves (Bonner, 2010; Feagin & Sikes, 1995; Strayhorn, 2010). These barriers to success result in part due to a lack of support from the colleges and universities that they attend (Allen, 1992; Parker, Puig, Johnson & Anthony, Jr., 2016). With institutional benefits designed to benefit white students over students of color, Black students must find their own alternatives for collaboration and to provide support for their peers. Many Black spaces can be defined as third spaces (Bhabha, 1994), where Black people go to find community, share information, and get advice. Using a concept I developed called the collegiate Black space, this dissertation argues that Black college students who attend historically white institutions have also turned digital spaces into Black spaces—spaces where resources are shared, counter-knowledge is produced, and activism is supported. The purpose of this qualitative research study is to use in-depth interviews to explore Black students’ use of digital spaces help their peer support efforts to organize and find community at historically white institutions. A better understanding of how Black students use third spaces to navigate the academy will help address the minimal body of research that looks at student uses of digital counter-spaces as a form of resistance against institutional oppression. This dissertation draws upon three theoretical frameworks—Black Critical Theory (BlackCrit) in education, Social Identity Theory (SIT), and Black Identity Theory (BIT)—to explore the lived experiences of Black college students at historically white colleges and universities. A focus group and individual interviews were conducted with a group of six Black students at a Tier 1 school in California who are building a digital platform that will allow peer connections, the sharing of resources and information, and organizing of activism efforts. A thematic data analysis revealed four main themes: 1) what it is like to be an academic while Black, 2) the challenges of Black collegians dealing with the inequalities of dual pandemics, 3) institutional oppression and Black student self-reliance as a form of resistance, and 4) how Black student fugitivity has gone digital. The findings of this dissertation affirm the need for a greater understanding of how peer spaces shape a Black student’s experience while in college, and the implications of my research study call for authentic institutional support of autonomous Black student spaces

The Transnational Mission of an Indian War Correspondent: P. R. S. Mani in Southeast Asia, 1944–1946

This article, based on new archival materials, reconstructs the experiences and observations of an Indian war correspondent from 1944 to 1946 as he covered the advance of Indian soldiers of the British-led Indian Army from northeast India, through Burma to Malaya at the war's end, then to their eventual deployment with the South East Asian Command in Java after the Japanese surrender. As it transpired, Captain P. R. S. Mani worked as an enlisted public relations officer of the British-led Indian Army but also sustained his commitment as a patriotic Indian nationalist, who gathered intelligence on the Indian diaspora in Southeast Asia and on the impact of Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army. Relatively little scholarship has focused on Asian war journalism. Mani's tension-ridden role as a self-styled ‘Indian Army observer’ provides an illuminating insight into the way in which Britain's lines of communication were appropriated and subverted during wartime and beyond, and into the way his own nationalism was reshaped by his unofficial transnational activities

Desiring Bollywood: Re-staging racism, exploring difference

In this article I engage with the insights that emerged through the making of Desiring Bollywood, a collaborative ethno-fiction project I produced in 2018. The project recruited academics, amateur actors, novice filmmakers, and enthusiastic university students to narrate the story of Jason, an aspiring actor and filmmaker from Nigeria who I first met in 2013 soon after his release from Tihar Prison in Delhi, India. My goals are two-fold: first, to share a few scenes from the film – embedded in this article as video clips – to broadly theorize the affordances and limits of what I call re-staging, the collaborative, performance-based multimodal method we devised and deployed to produce Desiring Bollywood. Second, and more central to the article, I aim to analyze these very same scenes to show how re-staging, as it offered participants involved in the project the opportunity to reflexively explore how Jason’s experiences of discrimination in Delhi and the aspirations and desires that led him there in the first place, create a rich site of analysis to engage with the nuances of anti-Black racism in India in a moment where ‘India-Africa’ economic relationships are on the rise. RESUMEN En este artículo examino el entendimiento que surgió a través de la producción de Desiring Bollywood, un proyecto colaborativo de etno-ficción que realicé en 2018. El proyecto reclutó académicos, actores amateurs, productores cinematográficos novicios y entusiastas estudiantes universitarios para narrar la historia de Jason, un aspirante a actor y productor cinematográfico, de Nigeria a quien conocí en 2013, poco después de su puesta en libertad de la Prisión Tihar en Delhi, India. Mi propósito es doble: primero, compartir algunas escenas del filme – embebidas en este artículo como video clips– para teorizar ampliamente las affordances y límites de lo que llamo remontaje, el colaborativo método multimodal basado en performance, que nosotros ideamos y utilizamos para producir Desiring Bollywood. Segundo, y más central al artículo, tengo como objetivo analizar estas mismas escenas para mostrar cómo el remontaje, en la medida que ofreció a los participantes involucrados en el proyecto la oportunidad de explorar reflexivamente cómo las experiencias de Jason de discriminación en Delhi y las aspiraciones y deseos que lo llevaron allí en primer lugar, crea un sitio profundo de análisis para abordar los matices del racismo anti-negro en India en un momento donde las relaciones económicas “India-África” están en aumento