Effects of Brief Messages About Antiretroviral Therapy and Condom Use Benefits Among Black and Latino MSM in Three U.S. Cities

This pilot study examined effects of HIV prevention messages about self and partner benefits of antiretroviral therapy (ART) and condom effectiveness on increased intentions for behavior change. Data were from Messages4Men, a study examining prevention messages among 320 HIV-positive and 605 HIV-negative Black and Latino MSM. Men completed a computer-based assessment after message exposure, and multivariable models controlled for risky sex and demographics. A majority of HIV-positive men reported increased intentions for ART use; 22% reported partner benefit information was new. HIV-positive men with a detectable viral load had significantly greater adjusted odds of reporting intentions for ART use. Over half of HIV-negative MSM reported ART benefit information was new, and 88% reported increased intentions to discuss ART use with infected partners. Black MSM anticipated they would increase condom use in response to the self and partner benefit messages. Tailored messages on benefits of ART are needed for MSM.     

Expanding black subjectivities in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah

Deploying the call-and-response mode as the artistic premise of her fiction, foremost African-American author, Toni Morrison, has persistently called in her criticism for a participatory, intellectual and political, engagement with her position on and concerns around blackness. Morrison’s ideas are being critiqued and expanded to reflect contemporary ‘African’ attitudes and perspectives within the contemporary Afrodiasporic writing of critically acclaimed emergent author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In particular, Adichie has, in conversation and in her most recent fiction, suggested that Africans (in the diaspora) articulate themselves differently from African-Americans. Problematized and politicized thus as contested, rather than universally accepted, subjective terrain, blackness more significantly points to the diversity and dynamism of black culture and testifies, in the current socio-political/-historical moment, to recognition of the enduring complexity of black subjectivity. In a close, comparative reading of Morrison’s celebrated novel, Song of Solomon (1977), and Adichie’s popular text, Americanah (2013) – both recipients of the National Book Critics Circle award, this essay offers a fresh, specifically transatlantic and transnational, analysis of Morrison’s African-American views on blackness through the contemporary, Afrodiasporic lens of Adichie. Guided by the dialogic call-and-response mode, and underpinned by cultural, race and diaspora theory, the essay suggests and explores the ways in which Americanah speaks (back) to Morrison’s Song of Solomon, interrogating ontologies of race, particularly blackness, through an ‘Africanness’ that takes cognizance of culturally specific and context-responsive, globalized configurations of female subjectivity in particular. In this way, this essay seeks to expand understandings of, and discussions around, black issues and black life in order not just to resituate the relevance of black cultural ontologies but, through comparative engagement with the ‘politics’ of blackness, to revive in the political consciousness and imagination their crucial significance.     

‘Me Against the World’: Autoethnographic poetry

The existing literature on race and ethnicity overlooks learning disability (LD), and the latter often overlooks Black males and segregated schooling. Thus, this poetic account embodies the voice of a Black male with LD. As an autoethnographer, I applied critical disability theory to learn and become cognizant about my academic journey and identity development. Autoethnography allowed me to examine my personal experiences to understand the cultural experiences that were meaningful during my academic journey. The purpose of the poetic account serves two purposes: to shatter all notions that Black males with LD in special education cannot succeed academically; and to become a voice by offering an inside perspective of how I understood my position in special education. Moreover, this account is important because it is rare that scholarship captures the combination of academic literature and poetry among Black students who have navigated the special education system.     

A partnership forged: BSW students and service learning at a historically Black college and university (HBCU) serving urban communities

ABSTRACT

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have a long-standing history of engaging the African-American community. In most instances, these institutions are located in predominantly African-American communities. This article intends to offer a discussion of a pedagogical approach used at an HBCU, located in a large mid-Atlantic city. The purpose of this macro-assignment was an effort designed to prepare BSW students for macro-practice with communities through participation in service-learning projects that involved community engagement with urban communities. Outcomes reflect that students have a vested interest in working with underserved communities, which exemplifies the School of Social Work’s mission; said mission is to fully prepare urban social work leaders who are committed to the alleviation of human suffering, social justice, and the improvement of the quality of life for diverse urban populations.     

Black Lives/White Backgrounds: Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric and Critical Race Theory

How do you criticise a hierarchical racial formation that is rendered nearly invisible by its colour (white) and positioning (background) in the contemporary, so-called colour-blind or post-racial US? The reading of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric that this essay will undertake seeks to offer a response to this question utilising some key insights from Critical Race Theory (CRT). As they are understood here, both CRT and Citizen offer counter-stories by ‘call[ing] out’ to what you ‘don’t see’, specifically to America’s racial formations so as to promote colour-consciousness and an anti-racist critique. Beginning with a discussion of the relationship between literary and legal narratives, followed by two sections on Rankine’s rhetorical strategies, this essay ends by closely reading her texts about Trayvon Martin, who was murdered on 26 February 2012.     

试论黑死病爆发的偶然性

在黑死病的影响问题上,以往学者在某种社会与人口发展理论的基础上,进行一种必然性的推论,从而忽视了黑死病的爆发具有偶然性的一面。这种偶然性主要表现在三个方面:从发生学上看,黑死病的爆发和扩散对于欧洲来说不具有必然性;黑死病之前的人口发展并非“过剩”;黑死病前人口发展减缓与黑死病导致的人口锐减之间并无必然关系。     

小人物的悲剧——浅析“美国梦”在《推销员之死》中的体现与幻灭

以金钱为主题的"美国梦"在阿瑟·米勒的代表作《推销员之死》中得到充分的体现,该剧主人公威利·洛曼的悲剧之死则代表着"美国梦"的幻灭。威利扭曲的性格是造成其悲剧命运的直接原因,而其所处的社会制度则是造成其悲剧命运的根本原因,决定了"美国梦"幻灭的必然性。     

伊恩•麦克尤恩历史小说《黑犬》的新历史观

新历史主义主张“文本的历史性和历史的文本性”,在承认历史的主观性,拒斥“宏大叙事”的同时,也认可了历史和文学在历史真实和艺术虚构上的相通性,让文学特别是历史小说获得了阐释历史人物和历史事件的应有空间。伊恩?麦克尤恩小说《黑犬》蕴含了丰富的新历史主义思想。小说通过不可靠叙述、视角转换与碎片化等手段客观地展现了主人公琼和伯纳德对遭遇黑犬和其他共同经历和见证的一些个人事件的不同记忆,说明历史和过去的不确定性和多维度性,以及它对“当下”个人的厚重影响。     

民俗的底色——张承志小说《黑骏马》的民俗写作

张承志的<黑骏马>是一棵文坛上的常青树,其恒久的艺术生命力在于该小说的民俗底色.小说民俗生活的成功描写,具体表现在:(一)有形物质民俗生活相;(二)无形心意民俗生活相.以上二者不仅为作品创造了一种独特的审美意境,而且形象别具一格地揭示出社会生活本质的某些方面,成为人们认识社会生活的一面镜子.     

复杂的矛盾与深刻的启示：－浅析《伤逝》

<伤逝>是鲁迅小说集<彷徨>中的一篇,全文充满着错综复杂的矛盾.全文贯穿着三大矛盾.这三大矛盾交织融合在一起,演奏出一曲悲凉的爱情交响乐,在读者心中留下了不尽的感受和深刻的启示.