The Esther M. Terry Award
Distinguished Dissertations in Afro-American Studies
Dissertation committees may unanimously award students with a distinction for their doctoral work. All dissertations earning a distinction during the defense are automatically nominated for the annual Esther M. Terry Award for the most outstanding dissertation.
Markeysha Davis, Ph.D. 2016
Dissertation Title: "Daring propaganda for the beauty of the Human Mind:” Critical Consciousness—Raising in Poetry and Drama of the Black Power Era, 1965-1976"
Chair: James Smethurst
Karla V. Zelaya, Ph.D. 2015
Dissertation Title: "'Sweat the Technique'": Visible-izing Praxis Through Mimicry in Phillis Wheatley's "On Being Brought from Africa to America"
Chair: Steven Tracy
Donald Geesling, Ph.D. 2014
Dissertation Title: "'Survival Kits on Wax': The Politics, Poetics, and Productions of Gil Scott-Heron"
Chair: Ernest Allen
James Carroll, Ph.D. 2013
Dissertation Title: "Composing the African Atlantic: Sun Ra, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, and the Poetics of African Diasporic Composition"
Chair: Steven Tracy
Ernest Gibson, Ph.D. 2012
Dissertation Title: "In Search of the Fraternal: Salvific Manhood and Male Intimacy in the Fiction of James Baldwin"
Chair: James Smethurst
Kabria Baumgartner, Ph.D. 2011
Dissertation Title: "Intellect, Liberty, Life: Women's Activism and the Politics of Black Education in Antebellum America"
Chair: Manisha Sinha
Jonathan Fenderson, Ph.D. 2011
Dissertation Title: "'Journey Toward a Black Aesthetic': Hoyt Fuller, the Black Arts Movement and the Black Intellectual Community"
Chair: James Smethurst
Christopher Tinson, Ph.D. 2010
Dissertation Title: "The Fight for Freedom Must Be Fought on all Fronts: Liberator Magazine and Black Radicalism, 1960-1971"
Chair: Ernest Allen