At 1:00 pm, Friday May 2, 2008 at Arsht Hall on the Wilmington campus, Dr. Yasser Payne will present his lecture, "Cope, Conform or Resist? How Black College Students Should Think About Double Consciousness in the 21st Century".  The lecture is part of the University's "Transforming Students and Instilling Passion" series sponsored by The College of Arts and Sciences and The Academy of Lifelong Learning.

For the past two years, a research collective of students entitled The Black American Studies Participatory Action Research (BAMS PAR) team has been evaluating the experiences of Blacks at the University of Delaware.  Specifically, this project organized five Black undergraduate students into a PAR design that documented the lived experiences of Black students, staff and faculty at the university.  The PAR study examined "use", or the everyday functions, of Blackness (Cross, Smith & Payne 2001).  The sample consisted of four focus groups of Black students, one with Black staff, and five individual interviews with Black faculty.  A content analysis revealed strong support for Cross, Smith & Payne's (2001) theory regarding the utility of Blackness.  Specifically, bonding, code switching, and individualism emerged as dominant codes in this study.