African American Woman Research Articles

Sudden Bilateral Sensorineural Hearing Loss due to Basilar Artery Occlusion (P3-5.027)

<h3>Objective:</h3> We describe a case of a patient with occlusion of the basilar artery and bilateral anterior inferior cerebellar arteries (AICAs) who presented with a chief complaint of sudden bilateral sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). <h3>Background:</h3> Sudden bilateral SNHL, defined as SNHL developing in less than 72 hours, is a rare phenomenon representing less than 5% of all acute SNHL cases. Whereas more frequent unilateral presentation is relatively benign, sudden bilateral SNHL represents a medical emergency and warrants immediate evaluation for life-threatening and/or reversible causes. <h3>Design/Methods:</h3> NA <h3>Results:</h3> A 56-year-old right-handed African American woman with personal medical history of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, stroke, tobacco abuse, and obesity presented with sudden onset bilateral hearing loss preceded by one week of persistent vertigo and nausea. On admission she was hypertensive to 240/122 mm Hg, physical examination was significant for saccadic pursuit with spontaneous bilateral horizontal and vertical down-beating nystagmus, truncal ataxia, and bilateral SNHL confirmed by audiogram. CT of head alongside CT angiography showed occlusion of V4 segment of right vertebral artery extending through most of the basilar artery, and near-occlusion of bilateral AICAs. MRI showed late acute/early subacute ischemic infarcts in bilateral anterior cerebellum, cerebellar peduncles, and pons. Patient was out of time window for thrombolysis with rt-PA, mechanical thrombectomy was deferred due to &gt;24h from symptom onset and stable neurological examination throughout hospital admission. Blood pressure was gradually lowered and antiplatelet therapy with aspirin was initiated prior to discharge to rehabilitation facility. <h3>Conclusions:</h3> Sudden bilateral SNHL in isolation or accompanied by vestibular, cerebellar and/or brainstem signs particularly in patients with significant risk factors for cerebrovascular disease should alarm a clinician of a possibility of vertebrobasilar occlusion and prompt appropriate and timely medical management as delay in optimal medical treatment is associated with increased morbidity and mortality in this patient population. <b>Disclosure:</b> Dr. Buciuc has nothing to disclose. Dr. Gonzalez has nothing to disclose. Dr. Ali has nothing to disclose. Dr. Nankee has nothing to disclose. Dr. Holmstedt has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a Consultant for Astrazeneca. The institution of Dr. Holmstedt has received research support from NIH. The institution of Dr. Holmstedt has received research support from Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. The institution of Dr. Holmstedt has received research support from CSPC Pharmaceuticals . Dr. Holmstedt has received personal compensation in the range of $5,000-$9,999 for serving as a Study Adjudicator with Ischemia Care.

Seeing Muslim Men and Women Hermeneutically: A Liberal-Feminist Study on Amina Wadud’s Qur’an Exegesis

Gender inequality became one of the important issues in the US as it intersects with other societal aspects, one of which is religion. In the last century, the US has seen a fast-growing number of believers in Islam, despite its unequal practices based on gender. American Muslim women are not only treated differently due to religious beliefs but also to racial backgrounds. The emergence of Amina Wadud, a female Imam with an African-American background, brings new thoughts on the position of women in Islam. Employing the Post-Nationalist approach combined with Rosemarie Tong’s liberal feminism theory, this article analyzes Wadud’s Qur’an and Women: Re-reading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective to reveal her thinking in becoming a female Imam in the US, as well as her fights against injustices towards Muslim women. It finds that her background as an African-American woman, a second class in American society, pushes her to put women’s rights in Islam forward, which are not consistent in the Qur’an. She re-interprets it with the hermeneutic method, putting women and men in the same position. While her pro-faith determination for equality drives her to overcome the rejection from the American Muslim community when she became an imam in a mixed congregation of Friday prayers.

Revisiting Deception in Breonna Taylor’s Case: A Cognitive-Acoustic Approach

The present paper proposes an eclectic model for examining the cognitive load involved in detecting deception that benefits from the acoustic dimension as an exercise in cognitive forensic linguistics. The corpus used is composed of the legal confession transcripts of the Breonna Taylor’s Case, a 26-year-old African-American woman worker who was shot dead by police officers in Louisville, Ky., in March 2020 during a crackdown on her apartment. The dataset comprises transcripts and recordings of the persons involved in the shooting event but have given unclear charges, and those accused of contributory negligence due to wanton misfiring. The data is analyzed based on the video interviews and reaction times (RT) as an application of the model proposed. The findings reveal that the episodes chosen and how they are analyzed exhibit that the modified ADCM along with the acoustic dimension provide a clear picture of cognitive load management in the course of constructing and producing lies.

Poetic Awakenings

Phillis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton… It was when I met you through your poetry, that I found out… words can lift off the page… and lift me. My heart. My history. My spirit. My consciousness… -Revelation! As an African-American woman, poetry is integral to how I see, understand, and make meaning of the world. My first teacher, my mother, taught me about the world and her/our history through poetry. By extension, my greatest teachers, the scholars to whom I often turn, are artists. Incorporating poetic reflexivity into my research engages a Black epistemology and challenges the rigid notion(s) of what (and who) constitutes academic/scholarly writing. In this essay, I argue that poetry – which I use expansively here - allows qualitative researchers to reveal, distill, and illuminate their thoughts and findings. In the Black MAP research project (www.thebmp.org) - designed as an online historic archive of black aesthetics as healing, resistance, and liberatory practice - poetry sits at the core and fills the soul of the work. My essay will draw from the archive, the assemblage, and the offerings of participants.

Performing HeLa: theatrical bodies and living remains

As a biomedical entity that has been the subject of a plethora of artistic and cultural projects, HeLa, the first immortal human cell line, calls for investigations into the human....

Medical specimens and the erasure of racial violence: the case of Harriet Cole

This article analyses the complex narrative of Harriet Cole, a 36-year-old African-American woman whose body was delivered to the anatomy department of Hahnemann Medical School in 1888. The anatomist Rufus...

“Making Such Spaces . . . Where None Previously Existed”: Interstitial Wit in Fran Ross’s Oreo

ABSTRACT This article explores how Fran Ross’s 1974 novel Oreo uses humor to challenge static notions of Black, Jewish, and American identity. Through her mock heroic quest, Oreo’s eponymous protagonist develops WIT (“Way of the Interstitial Thrust”), a system of self-defense that draws on her multifaceted identity as a Jewish, African American woman and that she uses to successfully navigate spaces that threaten her with physical violence and symbolic erasure. In its hilarious exploration of the complexity and commodification of identity in the late twentieth century United States, Oreo provides a still-relevant example of how humor can create new spaces for minoritized subjects who exist in the “interstices” of the landscape of American cultural production.

Love, Activism, and the Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Tara Green’s in-depth literary biography, Love and Activism: The Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, examines the life and works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, first-generation freeborn, post-emancipation Black woman activist and creative artist. Green’s work follows in the line of literary biographies such as Miriam Decosta-Willis’ Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells (1995); Vivian May’s Anna Julia Cooper: Visionary Black Feminist (2007); Hanna Wallinger’s Pauline Hopkins: A Literary Biography (2012); and Valerie Boyd’s Wrapped in Rainbows (2003). As with these works, Green demonstrates the wellspring of unexamined histories that await us through archival work focusing in Black studies. Tracing the personal and career trajectory of Dunbar-Nelson, Green shows that African American art and advocacy are products of a long arc across the history of Blacks in the United States. It is the post-emancipation New Orleans and its legacy of enslavement that informed the social world into which Dunbar-Nelson was born. Green captures the significance of Dunbar-Nelson’s biracial heritage—its importance as biological and cultural DNA that shaped the personal, psychic, and social visions of Black identity across enslaved populations and their posterity. Green reveals Dunbar-Nelson’s key place in African American literary tradition and women’s advocacy, a legacy that spans fiction, nonfiction, periodicals, and playwriting. The biography underscores Dunbar-Nelson’s impact in what might be called the emergence into a twentieth-century Black women’s modernist ethos. This case is made through the biography’s demonstration of Dunbar Nelson’s work and life that clearly anticipated the boldness of Black women artists of the Harlem Renaissance and their groundbreaking work.The biography is a chronological structure organized by key eras and movements in America and in Dunbar-Nelson’s life. A key thread running throughout the biography is the matter of respectability politics in the lives of post-emancipation African Americans. Green masterfully balances the use of archives, historical and critical scholarship, and Dunbar-Nelson’s own writings to convincingly establish the importance of this biography. The book is organized into twelve chapters that begin in chapter 1 with historical and biographical overview of the New Orleans and southern milieu into which Dunbar-Nelson was born. Tracing Dunbar-Nelson’s life and career from her New Orleans birthplace, the biography concludes with coverage of the final months of her life and her death at age sixty in Philadelphia. Here Green circles back to the work’s central focus—respectability—and how Dunbar-Nelson’s life may have been articulated by her contemporaries through the prism of respectability, the archives underscore what was arguably a radical life.Between the first and final chapter are ten chapters that trace and detail the life and works of Dunbar-Nelson. Chapter 2 establishes her importance as an early and key voice in the turn of the century New Negro Women’s movement which rejected conventional nineteenth-century notions that “women must be pious, submissive, pure, and domestic” (30). Chapters 3 and 4 cover the years of Alice’s marriage to Paul L. Dunbar. Green provides an insightful look at how the tensions between the Dunbars and their desire for middle-class respectability were informed by the shadows of slavery that had dictated their family lives as young children. Chapter 5 looks at Alice’s life and literary production in the early period after Paul’s death. Green’s look at her work among the circle of Black women peers, Hurston, Fausett, and Larsen offers an important lens into the era of Black women’s writing that Dunbar-Nelson operates.Chapters 6 and 11 are separated by four chapters but work as bookends to the focus on Dunbar-Nelson’s navigation of same-sex and heterosexual relationships, revealing her independence of thought and manners when it came to her sexuality. Chapter 7 introduces the phase of Dunbar-Nelson’s third marriage—a period of almost twenty years in which she was an active speaker and campaigner for women’s suffrage and racial uplift. These chapters underscore Dunbar-Nelson’s deep-seated role in Black activism and her determination and work in circles where Black women were not always respected as equals.Tara Green’s biography stands not only as a major contribution in African American literary studies but is also important for its connections of literature and culture. Most poignant is the book’s critical look at the life and works of Dunbar-Nelson that captures the ongoing precarious impact of racism and sexism on Black health and mortality, safety, and financial stability undergirding Black life across socioeconomic levels. Educated, professional, middle- and upper-class Blacks of Dunbar-Nelson’s era were no less immune to racism and sexism than in the twenty-first century.

Visualizing Freedom

This essay is the first study of the formerly enslaved woman Ellen Craft’s nineteenth-century photograph album and its contents, and the first study linking Craft’s album to one owned by another nineteenth-century African American woman, Arabella Chapman. Examining Craft’s album and its connections offers an opportunity to consider how African American women employed domestic photograph albums to record their experience of freedom. Past scholarship on photographs of famous formerly enslaved men and women has emphasized how these “self-made” individuals used photography to assert their autonomy in freedom. And, Craft herself participated in this convention when posing for her famous portrait disguised as the White man “William Johnson,” whose identity she passed through in order to obtain her freedom. Yet, this scholarship has not yet engaged the issue of family in photographs of the famous formerly enslaved. My study introduces Craft’s album as visualizing freedom differently through the linkage of photographs of family and friends across pages and under an album’s tight bindings. The book joins photographs together as material representations of Black familial and community bonds that had faced ever-present threats of violation and rupture under slavery. It visualizes freedom not so much in autonomous identity, but via cultivated connections between family and friends in respectable domestic space. Today, the mnemonic notations, fingerprints and smudges on its pages from the hands of four generations of female descendants after Craft reveal the album’s long legacy of preserving affirmative, embodied memories of attachment amongst African American women.

Abstract P6-05-46: Project SOAR (Speaking Our African American Realities): A qualitative study of the Strong Black Woman schema in the breast cancer context

Abstract Background: Marked disparities exist for African American women, relative to non-Latina white women, in the five-year survival rate for breast cancer. Black women breast cancer survivors also demonstrate relative disadvantage in specific quality of life (QOL) domains, persisting through at least two years after diagnosis. Although Black women have higher QOL in the spiritual domain relative to white women, disparities include lower physical QOL, as well as more pronounced depressive symptoms, perceived stress, fear of dying, unmet supportive care needs, and financial distress, with younger Black women (&amp;lt; 50 years) particularly at risk. African American breast cancer survivors also report receiving too little information from their oncologists during diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up care. Sociodemographic and medical factors only partially explain the QOL disparities. The goal of Project SOAR (Speaking Our African American Realities), a community-academic partnership, is to interrogate the potential relevance of the Strong Black Woman (or Black Superwoman) schema in the breast cancer context. The schema involves historically grounded expectations to prioritize caregiving over self-care, suppress emotions, present an image of strength, decline support, and strive to achieve success without adequate resources. Method: Black women were recruited via relevant email listservs and flyers distributed at local breast cancer events to take part in a study “to understand the unique experiences of African American women and their views on the Strong Black Woman concept as it applies during their breast cancer experience.” Eligibility criteria were self-identification as being: 1) an African American woman (or a Black woman living in the United States); 2) diagnosed with breast cancer (any stage, any diagnosis duration); 3) at least 21 years old; and 4) able to communicate in English. Three Gatherings (i.e., culturally curated focus groups) were held as half-day experiences in intimate settings (e.g., private homes, a church) in three California cities (Sacramento, Oakland, Los Angeles). Gatherings provided an entirely Black women’s space to discuss the breast cancer experience and the relevance and consequences of the Strong Black Woman schema, break bread together, and engage in an inspiring activity. Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted on the Gatherings transcripts with a critical realist, contextualist approach. Results: All participants (N = 37; age range = 30-94 years; M = 59 years) had heard of the concept of the Strong Black Woman. Reflexive thematic analysis yielded six themes: 1) historical legacy of Strong Black Woman; 2) navigating intersecting Strong Black Woman identities; 3) everyday challenges encountered on the battlefield by Strong Black Women; 4) Strong Black Woman in action during the breast cancer journey; 5) the complexities of seeking and accepting support; and 6) the liberated Strong Black Woman. Participants linked both negative and positive consequences with the Strong Black Woman schema. Negative consequences included the oncologic team and others expecting them to be strong and not to need support, as well as expectations of themselves to suppress emotions and to continue caring for others to the neglect of caring for themselves. Positive consequences included engaging in self-advocacy in the oncologic context, having a sense of resilience, and redefining strength to include expressing emotions and accepting help from others. Conclusion: Qualitative analysis revealed the relevance of the Strong Black Woman schema in the breast cancer context, as well as its negative and positive consequences. Future research can assess whether oncologic professionals’ awareness of the schema is useful in ensuring they offer support and refer Black women diagnosed with breast cancer to culturally relevant supportive resources. Citation Format: Tammie Denyse, Kimberly J. Martin, Yrvane K. Pageot, Praise Owoyemi, Annette L. Stanton, Jacqueline H. Kim. Project SOAR (Speaking Our African American Realities): A qualitative study of the Strong Black Woman schema in the breast cancer context [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2022 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2022 Dec 6-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(5 Suppl):Abstract nr P6-05-46.

Intersectionality and Relational Psychoanalysis: New Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Sexuality ed. by Max Belkin and Cleonie White

Reviewed by: Intersectionality and Relational Psychoanalysis: New Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Sexuality ed. by Max Belkin and Cleonie White Deborah Shilkoff, LICSW (bio) Intersectionality and Relational Psychoanalysis: New Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Sexuality, Edited by Max Belkin and Cleonie White Psychoanalytic metapsychology has changed in the past decades from an emphasis on drives as the source of intrapsychic organization, energy, and movement. The nexus of psychoanalytic theory has evolved from the intrapsychic to an interpersonal, intersubjective, and relational focus. With the evolution of intersubjective psychoanalysis, the bi-personal field of the analytic pair is now seen as the vehicle of intrapsychic growth. The relational field further evolved as the locus for development of the ego. An appreciation of the social milieu and its effect on the individual led to an understanding of the long arm of trauma on development. Relational psychoanalysis holds that one sequela of trauma is dissociation, the inability to hold overwhelming pain that threatens the ego with fragmentation. The individual's internal states are cut off from one another, disabling the ego from cohering. Self-states are not perceived as belonging to the individual but are felt to be "not me" states. Internal conflict cannot be accessed because it did not fully develop or because it was sidelined by overwhelming trauma. Affect regulation and thought are not available to stem the flow of traumatic fight/flight/freeze enactment. Philip Bromberg's "Credo" (2012) tells us that "the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis is a self–Other negotiation that takes place between and within analyst and patient at the interface of dissociation and the capacity to hold internal conflict" (p. 273). Bromberg counseled achieving a balance of "safety and risk" within the therapeutic alliance as the most effective analytic tool. Enactments are processed jointly with the goal of developing the capacity for thought and affect tolerance. [End Page 207] Complexity becomes available, and the world is no longer seen as monolithic and annihilating. Kimberlé Crenshaw (2016, 1991) is the originator of the term "intersectionality," which is a way to name and frame the complexity at the intersection of racism, sexism, classism, colonialism, ableism, xenophobia, and heterosexism. Without such a "frame," Crenshaw tells us, we lack an awareness, context, and empathy for the various states experienced by those in these overlapping categories. Not being able to see more than one part of the overlapping frame at a time results in deficits in or assaults on social justice. Crenshaw gives the example of Emma DeGraffenreid, an African American woman who was denied a job at General Motors. She sued GM for race and gender discrimination. The judge denied her claim, saying that GM did hire Blacks and women, so there was no discrimination, and he could not grant her preferential treatment. Crenshaw saw that the judge missed a key point. The Blacks hired by GM were all men who worked on the assembly line. The women, all white, were secretaries. GM had not hired Black women, a blind spot for both GM and the judge. Crenshaw saw this as an intersection in which Ms. DeGraffenreid was unacknowledged. The overlap with intersectionality and relational psychoanalysis is represented in the ability to see people and institutions as complex, with overlapping meanings. The contributors in this well-written book help us see how our unconscious sense of privilege limits our ability to see the intersecting vertices of our patients' realities. We then become part of the social structure from which patients may feel excluded. The revolutionary changes in both relational psychoanalysis and intersectionality, as outlined in this book, constitute both the ability to see complex structures as internal and external, and the function of bearing witness to trauma at many levels simultaneously. Each chapter represents a different focus, so each will be addressed separately. In "Queer Identities," Max Belkin says each category is a metaphor, not a binary stereotype that inhabits a transitional space. Our narrative is both "social" and "idiosyncratic." With his patient, Ana, both were in a "dissociative cocoon" of mutual hiding of their true selves from the other in a "fascinating but [End Page 208] disturbing hall of mirrors," competing with one another for the moral high ground of...

Revisiting HIV/AIDS Theatre: Black and Queer Spatio-Temporalities in Cheryl L. West’s Before It Hits Home

This article recuperates Cheryl L. West’s domestic drama Before It Hits Home (1991) as a milestone in HIV/AIDS drama. Home is the first full-length play to examine the destructive impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the African American community and one of the first HIV/AIDS plays written by an African American woman. Before It Hits Home has not received the scholarly recognition it deserves; this article aims to rectify that neglect with the help of Black studies and queer theory. In particular, the article undertakes an in-depth examination of the play’s overlooked spatio-temporal possibilities, demonstrating that West’s use of juxtapositions and overlaps offers an alternative to white and heteronormative spatio-temporalities. I argue that West’s liberating reconstruction of time and space not only queers white spectatorship but also resists a predominantly white HIV/AIDS canon. Building on Frantz Fanon’s notion of disalienation, I further conclude that West’s theatre destigmatizes the seropositive diagnosis, allowing for emancipatory possibilities.

In Search of Liberty: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World

In Search of Liberty sheds new light on Black freedom struggles during the nineteenth century, locating them within an international context that testifies to the resilience of those African Americans who forged new identities for themselves far beyond the shores of the United States, whether in Africa, the Caribbean, or Europe. The eleven essays in this collection are divided into four geographical sections. The first of these, North America, opens with Franco Paz and Harvey Amani Whitfield's essay on early Black migration to Nova Scotia, viewed through the harrowing case of Elizabeth Watson, an enslaved African American woman whose search for liberty resulted, perversely, in her reenslavement. Mekala Audain tackles another neglected frontier of liberty in her illuminating essay on Black migration from Louisiana to Spanish Texas during the early nineteenth century, while Thomas Mareite explores in telling detail the risk-laden experiences of Black refugees from slavery in early independent Mexico (1821–1836).

Fetal demise and Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome in a patient with hyperemesis gravidarum: a case report

BackgroundWernicke–Korsakoff syndrome is a neuropsychiatric disorder caused by thiamine deficiency composed of two related disorders accounting for an acute presentation and chronic progression. Hyperemesis gravidarum presents a significant risk factor for Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome as symptoms may rapidly progress in the setting of pregnancy. We present the first-reported case of hyperemesis-gravidarum-associated Wernicke encephalopathy in a patient in the first half of pregnancy in which a missed diagnosis led to septic shock, fetal demise, and eventual profound Korsakoff syndrome.Case presentationWe present the case of a 33-year-old primigravid African American woman at 15 weeks gestational age who initially presented at a community emergency department with nausea and vomiting that ultimately progressed to severe hyperemesis-gravidarum-associated Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, fetal demise, and septic shock. The patient received a total of 6 weeks of high-dose parenteral thiamine. Magnetic resonance imaging of the head and formal neuropsychological assessment following treatment plateau confirmed the diagnosis of Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome.ConclusionsThe multisystem complications seen in severe thiamine deficiency can delay timely administration of high-dose thiamine, particularly in pregnancy, in which the classic triad of Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome may not raise clinical suspicion due to rapid progression of neurological sequelae in this population. We advise a low threshold for parenteral thiamine repletion in pregnant women with persistent vomiting as hyperemesis gravidarum-induced severe thiamine deficiency can result in Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, sepsis, and fetal demise.

We'll Fight It Out Here: A History of the Ongoing Struggle for Health Equity: How a coalition of Black health professions schools made health equity a national issue by David Chanoff and Louis W. Sullivan (review).

Reviewed by: We'll Fight It Out Here: A History of the Ongoing Struggle for Health Equity: How a coalition of Black health professions schools made health equity a national issue by David Chanoff and Louis W. Sullivan Rueben C. Warren, DDS, MPH, DrPH, MDiv (bio) We'll Fight It Out Here: A History of the Ongoing Struggle for Health Equity: How a coalition of Black health professions schools made health equity a national issue. David Chanoff and Louis W. Sullivan. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. We'll Fight It Out Here: A History of the Ongoing Struggle for Health Equity by David Chanoff and Louis W. Sullivan, MD is an extraordinary story of women and men who worked to improve the health and human condition of Black and other underserved or unserved populations. They established and sustained academic health professions institutions and provided health care, including health services and health education, to targeted populations. The Association of Minority Health Professions Schools has served all segments of society dating back to the 1800. The book chronicles instances where member schools engaged in human subjects research and educated a diverse population including racial/ethnic minority, sex/gender minoritized, low-income, rural, and urban students. They sustained a social agenda that extended across the globe. Minority health professions schools have historically targeted and educated African American students and students from other parts of the African Diaspora and the African continent. As a result, their impact extends beyond the U.S. Because of their common missions and the need to build a sustained collation, in 1976, the Association of Minority Health Professions Schools (AMHPS) was founded for the modern era. The Association of Minority Health Professions Schools' work dates to the middle 1800s. Historically, minority health professions schools provided formal education and training in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, nursing, biomedical science, and various allied health programs. Due to limited resources, perceived need and demand, the schools modified or closed some of their education and training offerings. As they do to the present day, graduates participated in human subjects research; were among the pillars in educating health care professionals of minority health professions schools; engaged in direct patient care in the public and private sectors; assumed federal, state, and local government positions; and provided leadership in a plethora of public health areas. As global health communities strive for health equity, these Black health professions schools banded together to form the Association of Minority Health Professions Schools (AMHPS) to "fight" for health equity before the term health equity was popularized by health professionals, educators, and public health officials. The hallmark of AMHPS's major achievements begins with its founding in 1976, continues with the 2010 elevation of the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities to an Institute within the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. Department of Health [End Page 513] and Human Services. The AMHPS member schools continue to press the United States towards a framework of equity in both health and health care. Chanoff and Sullivan's book chronicles the AMHPS story in 11 chapters, starting with an unnamed, enslaved Black man owned by a White doctor. The Black man assisted the doctor in his medical practice in Windsor, Connecticut. After "working" with the White physician for many years, the enslaved man was granted his freedom, adopted the name Prius Manumit, and established his own medical practice. According Chanofff and Sullivan, Manumit was the first African American physician accepted by White society. Better-known African American physicians include James Derham (Durham), who was born in 1762, in Philadelphia, and practiced medicine there, and Martin Robinson Delany and James McCune Smith who were in medical school, but who were forced to withdraw due to racist objections from their Harvard classmates. Harriet Kezia Hunt, an African American woman, also was forced to withdraw from Harvard because of racism and patriarchy. Interestingly, in 1869, Robert Tanner Freeman, an African American man, graduated in the first class of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. After their forced withdrawal from Harvard, Delany and Smith completed medical school abroad, returning to the U.S. to practice medicine. Both became involved in civil rights...

Four Novels of 1939: Ambition and Redemption; Ethnicity and Race

Four Novels of 1939: Ambition and Redemption; Ethnicity and Race

Home is where the hate is: gender, race, class and the domestic abuse plotline in fiction and on screen

ABSTRACT The article examines the representation of domestic violence in the novel and screen versions of The Girl on the Train and series 1 and 2 of Big Little Lies. It argues that in the last five years there has been a boom in depictions of domestic abuse, ranging from radio and soap operas, such as The Archers and Eastenders, to the “glossy” screen productions examined in the article. This reflects fourth-wave feminist interest in hidden forms of gendered violence and the extension to existing laws on intimate partner abuse in the US and UK. This article argues that, while the popular female-authored domestic crime novels that The Girl on the Train and Big Little Lies are based on highlight economic disadvantage and patriarchal privilege as factors determining domestic abuse, the screen adaptations veer towards an emphasis on individual couple dynamics and victim-blaming. It focuses particularly on sexism and racism in the second series of Big Little Lies. Written by veteran Hollywood screenwriter David E. Kelley along with high-profile white female stars, the series shifts emphasis away from gendered violence and towards intergenerational female conflict by blaming domestic violence on two older female figures, one of them an African-American woman.

Translocality and the future: postcolonial connectivities in 1960s Ghana

ABSTRACT This article explores the translocality of 1960s Ghana. It brings into conversation the connectivities crafted by official state diplomacies conducted by Kwame Nkrumah’s government in the name of Pan-Africanism and the activisms, organizational work, and movements of Pan-African, diaspora, and white European women within and beyond Ghana, against the backdrop of a racialized global Cold War order. Focusing on the messiness and tensions of these connections I bring into conversation seemingly separate agential topics. Whether it is through state visits with Eric Williams, the tensions of minister exchange programmes with Guinea, or of diaspora conferences and organizing by African and Afro-American women, and the racialized and gendered dynamics of Nkrumaism, each is entangled and co-constituted with the wider ideational and material reality of the relational living postcolonial project. The variety of experiences, dramas, disputes, and possibilities, speak to how Ghana’s connections with the world were interpreted and used to advance visions of civil rights and Pan-Africanism, while also operating within, against, and beyond the state. The relational project of Nkrumaism demonstrates how translocal power can be crafted to change the nature of translocal entanglements, not erase them, but make them more equitable, while simultaneously reproducing underlying tensions.

An Uncommon Variant of Turner Syndrome in an African American Woman

The extra gonadal consequences of Turner’s Syndrome (TS) also pose risks to patients, namely cardiovascular. Clinicians should maintain a level of clinical suspicion for TS in patients with primary amenorrhea even without typical physical characteristics. Interestingly, TS has uncommon variant forms with varying degrees of clinical manifestations. Even so, all TS and TS variants maintain a high risk for cardiovascular events. Therefore, early TS diagnosis is of utmost importance. Here, we present a case of a young, African-American woman with primary amenorrhea with few overt clinical signs of TS. With high clinical suspicion, genetic testing is pursued and demonstrates the TS variant. This is important because variant forms have a similar increased risk of premature hypertension, diabetes, and aortic dissection.

Atypical jobs in psychology: Interview of Dr. Karen DuBois-Walton.

This article provides a look into the career of Dr. Karen DuBois-Walton, the president of Elm City Communities in New Haven, Connecticut. As an African American woman and a trained clinical psychologist, Dr. DuBois-Walton has utilized her knowledge of psychology to guide her career in serving marginalized communities. Fueled by her interest in community building and her willingness to challenge the status quo, Dr. DuBois-Walton has helped to transform the policy and infrastructure that underlie the historic marginalization of those across the New Haven community. This interview outlines her career trajectory and how her work has helped impact families on both an individual and systemic levels. Dr. DuBois-Walton provides commentary on how her training as a psychologist has fundamentally shaped her approach to serve families and how through her role, she strives to set in place programming and policy that moves away from how our nation has historically treated low-income families. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).