Graduation Year
2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Degree Granting Department
Sociology
Major Professor
Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Aisha Durham, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Julia Meszaros, Ph.D.
Keywords
race, emotion, emotional respectability, education, gender
Abstract
Using ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews, this project explores the extent to which race, class, and gender shape the socialization that Black women receive about their emotions and attitudes in a college bridge program. It unpacks the ways that dominant emotion cultures can inform the emotional socialization practices of a college bridge program in ways that resist and reproduce larger cultural narratives about Black women. To operationalize this emotional socialization, I introduce a concept called emotional respectability, which suggests that emotional reactions and demeanor must always align with the larger emotion cultures and goals of institutions such as family and education. The data presented in this project suggests that through vehicles of family, emotional respectability, and discipline, the program provides academic preparation alongside a more invisible curriculum related to emotional socialization which encourages the resistance and reproduction of larger cultural narratives about Black women, especially with regard to emotion.
Scholar Commons Citation
Johnson, Olivia Ann, "Black Girl Magic?: Negotiating Emotions and Success in College Bridge Programs" (2017). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/6871
