Date of Award
December 2017
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
African American Studies
Advisor(s)
Herbert Ruffin
Keywords
Drag, Film, Mammy, Pan Africanism, Representations, Slavery
Subject Categories
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
This thesis examines the signification of the mammy stereotype in the 21st century. The performances of Martin Lawrence, Tyler Perry and Eddie Murphy’s as mammies in drag are the selected texts for the project. By presenting the many mammy representations over the past 150 years, I outline the ways in which the mammy stereotype dehumanizes black women and hinders the Pan African agenda. Through the commodification of the mammy stereotype it has been de-historicized and thus separated from its beginnings as a part of the white supremacist imagination. Discourse analysis is used to analyze its meaning and signification while black feminist theory and Pan Africanism are used as lenses to identify the systemic oppressions at work within the stereotype that help to demean and the modify the behavior of black women.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
McDole, Ayondela, "Mammy Representations in the 21st Century" (2017). Theses - ALL. 194.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/194
