Browsing by Subject "Oakland"

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Brownfields revitalization and affordable housing : an evaluation of inclusionary models of brownfield redevelopment in Oakland, California
(2013-05) Violet, Carla Marie; Sletto, Bjørn
Brownfield redevelopment is called upon to remedy damaged ecological, economic, and social conditions due to contamination from prior land use(s). It can be utilized as a means for revitalizing low-income neighborhoods and communities of color that have suffered from years of economic disinvestment and a polluted environment. Critics of brownfield redevelopment in low-income neighborhoods argue that this form of revitalization can backfire when property values and rental prices rise and existing residents are pushed out. The City of Oakland has demonstrated a form of inclusionary brownfield redevelopment that incorporates housing that is affordable to existing residents in the area and thus avoiding the form of exclusionary housing witnessed in other cases of brownfield redevelopment in central cities. This report builds on the hypothesis that inclusionary brownfield redevelopments in Oakland can serve as a model approach for other cities in preventing displacement of lower income, residents of color through gentrification.
Cecil and Cleopatra : a showman examines antiquity amidst the depression
(2023-04-21) Abou-Jaoude, Amir; Clarke, John R., 1945-; Papalexandrou, Athanasios Christou, 1965-
The advertisements for Cleopatra (1934) suggested that the film would not be a routine survey of Roman history. Rather, it would be “one of the most stupendous and exciting productions ever seen on screen…made as only Cecil B. DeMille could make it.” In this thesis, I explore how DeMille created his incarnation of the Egyptian pharaoh. The great showman always emphasized the authenticity of his historical pageants. Yet I propose that Depression-era conditions affected DeMille’s depiction of Cleopatra. While he consulted contemporary scholarship about the sovereign, he conceived a version of the queen that would appease Hollywood’s newly empowered censors. DeMille incorporated artifacts from the tomb of Tutankhamun into his sets, but he also drew on grand nineteenth-century paintings of antiquity. Furthermore, he adorned Cleopatra’s Alexandrian palace with modish Art Deco motifs. I argue that DeMille’s anachronisms do not indicate his disregard for history, but instead evince his bold experiment. The director believed that he could bridge the divide between the past and the present-day. By combining the classical and contemporary, DeMille could create a Cleopatra for the cinema, a queen who possessed all her storied glory, but who was au courant enough to hold her own in the most modern art form—the movies. If DeMille was successful in this endeavor, his production would be truly “stupendous” and “exciting.” While watching Cleopatra, audiences could appreciate the grandeur of Rome, the glamor of Egypt, and the grand sweep of history.
Freaks of the industry : peculiarities of place and race in Bay Area hip-hop
(2010-05) Morrison, Amanda Maria, 1975-; Hartigan, John, 1964-; Flores, Richard R.; Stewart, Kathleen; Perez, Domino; Wakins, Craig
Through ethnography, I examine how hip-hop’s expressive forms are being used as the raw materials of everyday life by residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, home to what many regard as one of the most stylistically prolific, politically charged, and racially diverse hip-hop “scenes” in the world. This focus on regional specificity provides a greater understanding of the impact hip-hop is having on the ground, as an aspect of localized lived practice. Throughout, I make the case for the importance of ethnographically grounded localized research on U.S. hip-hop, which is surprisingly still relatively rare. Most scholars simply stress its continuity within a set of deterritorialized Diasporic African and African-American verbal-art traditions. My aim is not to contest this assertion, but to add to the body of knowledge about one of the most significant cultural inventions of the twentieth century by exploring hip-hop’s racial heterogeneity and its regional specificity. Acknowledging this kind of diversity allows us to reconceive what hip-hop is and how it matters in U.S. society beyond the ways it is usually framed: as either an oppositional form of black-vernacular culture or a co-opted and corrupted commodity form that reinscribes hegemonic values more than it actually contests them. Examining hip-hop within a specific, regionally delineated community reveals how hip-hop’s role in American life is more nuanced and complex. It is neither a pure vernacular expression of an oppressed class nor merely a cultural commodity imposed upon consumers and alienated from producers. In the Bay Area, hip-hop “heads” simultaneously consume mass-produced rap while producing homespun forms of music, dance, slang, fashion, and folklore. Through these forms, they construct individual and group identities that register primarily in expressive, affective terms. These novel cultural identities complicate rigid social markers of race, gender, and class; more specifically, they challenge the widely held perception that hip-hop is solely the terrain of inner-city young African-American men. More fundamentally, a sense of belonging is engendered through localized modes of expression and embodied style that manifest through shared practices, discourses, texts, symbols, locales, and imaginaries.
Sabbath in the garden : time, space, and moral reform at California colleges (1851-1900)
(2016-12) Lee, Michel Sunhae; Graber, Jennifer, 1973-; Reuben, Julie A
This historical examination of private California colleges between 1851 and 1900 presents the argument that the related projects of Anglo-Protestant moral reform and higher education were concerned not only with sacred space, but also sacred time. Secondarily, it draws an examination of California higher education in the early decades of the state into a national, rather than simply regional, narrative. Drawing on newspapers, images, student publications, college catalogues and handbooks, and missionary reports, I argue that educators conceived of campuses as spaces of moral safety from the corrupting influences of urban society, as well as temporal havens that stayed the tide of secular change. This endeavor to temporally and spatially protect Christian morality found its culmination in regulations for Sunday Sabbath-keeping and chapel attendance enforced upon students at Mills College, the University of the Pacific, Occidental College, and antecedents of the University of California, Santa Barbara.