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Marci Whitehead
No full textAfter graduating from LIU and securing both a teaching position, which proved not to be her passion, and a social work job at Abbott House, Whitehead continued her involvement in Greek life. In the early 1980s, Whitehead joined the Eta Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA), where she served as President, Graduate Advisor, Membership Chair, and Bachelors Standard Chair during her tenure. She was a very active member and leader, striving to keep the organization’s spirit alive through the various events such as “rites of passage, all of our acts of greed, programs, Aka Rosa, our highway beautification, The Great Bronx Cleanup” ([38:33]). Through mentorship, Whitehead became a great leader who focused on maintaining the organization\u27s standards, starting at the top and trickling down. For Whitehead, she emphasizes the importance of each sister and how “every story touched [her] heart” ([40:42]). Looking at the organization today, Whitehead emphasizes the importance for the directors and younger members to learn about the principles that founded AKA: Sisterhood, Scholarship, and Service.
Although Whitehead’s life is far more complex, she highlights how APA and her own hard work help shape the Bronx community, its members, and herself. Greek life isn’t just about one’s active participation in college, but, as Whitehead states, it is a “lifelong bond” ([27:40]).
LINK TO VIDEO INTERVIEW: https://cdm17265.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/baahp/id/107/rec/4
The Narrative Effects of Cure on Representations of Disability in the Medical Procedural and Body Horror Genres
No full textIn disability studies, “cure” can refer both to literal cures and to the cultural belief that disabilities are problems with the body that can and should be solved through these medical interventions. In recent years, disability scholars have written about this topic of cure critically, but an academic media analysis approach to cure has yet to be taken, despite the prevalence of narratives where disabled characters are cured. This thesis explores how cure shapes disabled stories that are told through film and television, by viewing a sample of over 50 films and 70 episodes of television focused on disabled characters and considering further examples. Then, through a qualitative study of these texts, this thesis proposes new frameworks through which cure influences narratives within two genres that emerged as significant: the medical procedural and body horror. Both genres place their narrative focus on the nonnormative body; in this way, both genres establish disability as their primary conflict. The medical procedural features the process of curing a disabled body as its episodic plot structure, whereas body horror features the process of disabling abled bodies as its framework of horror. Further academic research is needed to explore the role of cure in the narratives of these genres and others not theorized here
Illustrations Submission Guidelines
No full textAll original forms of illustrations must be supplied with the final manuscript
Terrill Hughes
No full textBorn to parents with roots in Jamaica and Mississippi, Terrill Hughes grew up in the Bronx, which is surrounded by cultural diversity and community pride. His early experiences were shaped by both the challenges of his environment and the strong guidance of family and fraternity brothers. Hughes described how joining Kappa Alpha Psi provided him with not only mentorship but also discipline and purpose, which changed the course of his life. He reflected on his role in helping to charter the Bronx Alumni Chapter and his hopes for expanding undergraduate chapters across local campuses.
In the interview, Hughes highlighted brothers who shaped his leadership, particularly during his time as polemarch (chapter president or leader). He nostalgically recalled the style, discipline, and “cane work” traditions that have long been important to Kappa culture. For Hughes, the fraternity represented a community of supportive male mentors who “saved his life” and continue to guide and inspire the next generation.
Looking forward, Hughes hopes to see the Bronx Alumni Chapter grow in civic engagement, inspiring local youth to strive toward achievement. On a personal level, he dreams that his two sons and nephews may one day join the fraternity, which continues a legacy of excellence. When asked what the Bronx represents, Hughes responded without hesitation: “Home.” Even though he now lives in Westchester and works in the financial district, his favorite memories remain tied to Bronx food, music, and community. He sees the borough as a place filled with hope and hidden talent.
Hughes’s story emphasizes the importance of African American fraternal organizations in shaping identity, leadership, and community service. His reflections depict how Kappa Alpha Psi functioned as a personal support system and a public force for civic engagement in the Bronx. His story also demonstrates how Black fraternities pass down values like achievement, mentorship, and legacy; shaping and building younger generations in urban communities. His story explains how Black fraternities teach success, guidance, and tradition to new generations in the community.
Link to Video Recording: https://cdm17265.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/baahp/id/65/rec/1
Frederick Collins - Part 1
No full textDr. Collins tells the story of 1520 Sedgwick as a place of loss and morality, where tragic events happened “few and far between,” but the community always looked out for each other and was primarily peaceful and safe. It was this environment, of eager youth and supportive adults, that helped the culture that hip hop would blossom from. The sounds that would subsequently be created were a product of this safe space. Also prevalent in the interview is the accurate account of this development from Collins’ perspective, as one of the first three children to live in the building. He remembers that many communities, African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and other communities alike, had a presence in this peace. This diverse community, a sense of family, and a constantly reinforced hope were the ground that hip hop took off from. Creativity, like the use of flood lights to power Kool Herc’s speakers, and the ideas that created a clubhouse from old cement in the lot behind the building, flourished. It was this combination of creativity, affordable housing, hope, family, and accountability that created hip hop, and, for Fred Collins, the idea that “anything is possible.” (Summary by: Emma Garr, Intern for the Bronx African American History Project - Fordham University).
LINK TO VIDEO INTERVIEW: TB
Cheryl Simmons Oliver
No full textSimmons-Oliver’s education reflected those same values. Attending Catholic institutions—St. Anthony of Padua School, Cathedral High School, and Marymount Manhattan College—she encountered racial and ethnic diversity that deepened her awareness of inequality and strengthened her commitment to inclusion and justice. Her studies continued beyond college: she earned a Master of Science, a Juris Doctor, and an M.B.A. from various institutions throughout her career, a rare feat for any woman of her generation, and especially for a Black woman in mid-century Americas. For Simmons-Oliver, education was more than achievement; it was a means of self-definition and a way to honor her family’s belief that no obstacle was insurmountable. That conviction guided her professional life.
Simmons-Oliver began her career at the Northside Center for Child Development, founded by Mamie and Kenneth Clark, whose research helped dismantle segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. As a reading therapist working with adolescents in Harlem, she witnessed the systemic neglect that shaped Black children’s lives. One moment stood out to her: a student told her, “You’re the first person who ever took time to listen.” From that point on, she understood listening as a form of liberation, an ethic of care that became central to her leadership.
As the founder of the Bronx Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Inc., affectionately known as The Family Chapter, Simmons-Oliver created spaces for community gatherings, cultural programs, and intergenerational mentorship, where Black families could share knowledge, support one another, and assert their presence in public life. Married for more than five decades to her childhood classmate, Edward Oliver, Simmons-Oliver raised three sons; all are college-educated and embody the family values passed down through generations. She challenges deficit narratives about the South Bronx, insisting its true story lives in networks of kinship, corner stores, churches, and codes of dignity.
Simmons-Oliver’s life work is a testament to how memory becomes history and how community, when nurtured, becomes a lasting force.
LINK TO VIDEO INTERVIEW: http://cdm17265.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/baahp/id/9
Mina Jones
No full textOral history recorded for the Bronx African American History Project on January 30, 2023 with Mina Jones, who grew up in the United Workers Cooperative Colony, or the Allerton Coops. Mina\u27s grandmother, Celia (Tsivia) Langert, raised her mother, Evelyn Lambert, in the Coops, and Evelyn gave birth to Mina in California. When Evelyn and Mina returned to the Coops after a few years, Leon Lamby Lambert became Mina\u27s stepfather. In her oral history, Mina speaks about her family\u27s history and background, her experience growing up in the Coops, the complexity of navigating her biracial identity (her father was Afro-Chicano and her mother of Ashkenazi Jewish background), her secular upbringing, and much more.
LINK TO VIDEO INTERVIEW: https://cdm17265.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/baahp/id/103/rec/4
Denise Oliver-Vélez - Part 2
No full textDenise Oliver-Vélez not only has one of the most remarkable lives to be recorded for both the BHS and Bronx African-American History Project archives, she also possesses a beautiful spirit, simplicity, and generosity in her personality. It would be expected for a person of such prowess to sound the part and be hard to comprehend in all her sophistication. Despite deserving this podium, Oliver-Vélez’s life is a testament to the power that lies in understanding others, rather than acting above them. In finishing an exceptional interview, she makes sure to leave a piece of advice to future communities and those attempting to connect others: “If your grandmother can’t understand what you\u27re talking about, you failed” ([1:01:08]).
LINK TO VIDEO INTERVIEW: https://cdm17265.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/baahp/id/104/rec/2
The Small Worlds of Childhood: Philosophy, Poetics, and the Queer Temporalities of Early Life
No full textThe Small Worlds of Childhood argues that prose representations of bourgeois childhood contain surprising opportunities to reflect on the temporality of experience. In their narratives of children at home in their everyday worlds, Adalbert Stifter, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Walter Benjamin are not only able to shed a unique light on key issues in the history of philosophy. They also offer a queer critique of the normative expectation that the literature of childhood is oriented toward the future.
Stone shows that when writers engage in philosophical storytelling, showing children tarrying in quotidian experience, they dislodge childhood from its nostalgic value to grown-ups and the heteronormative demand to grow up. Such stories of children as philosophical subjects thus take on their own lingering, backwards, or all together strange sense of time. Stone demonstrates the necessity of recognizing how texts on childhood—before and beyond Freud—engage literary language in the service of a variety of philosophical attitudes, reminding us how poetic techniques can tell us something extraordinary about moments of ordinary experience and the manner with which humans, and especially children, cognize the world.
By bringing canonical German-language literary and philosophical traditions into conversation with current English-language queer approaches, Stone opens a queer counter-history of German and Austrian realist and modernist literature.
This title is available from the publisher on an open-access basis