Academic literature on the topic 'American drama – Minority authors'

In literary theory, the works of (ethnic) minority authors–and similarly, the works of authors dealing with minorities–are often referred to as “assimilation narrative.” This term tends to suggest that minority authors, who write in the language of their country, seek a place in society through assimilation. Assimilation, however, means melting up in the majority nation by adopting all the values, customs and way of life characteristic of the majority, and abandoning, leaving behind, giving up the original traditional values, ethics, lifestyle, religion etc. of the minority. Assimilation means disappearing without a trace, continuing life as a new person, with new values, language, a whole set of new cultural assets. In this paper an effort is made to show that this is in fact not what many of the ethnic minority writers look for, so the term assimilation narrative is in many, although certainly not all, the cases, erroneuosly applied. It is justified to make a distinction between assimilation and integration narratives, as the two are not the same. In the paper examples are provided from Hispanic-American literature (Mexican-American, Puerto Rican and Dominican), across a range of genres from prose through drama to poetry, and also, examples are discussed when the author does in fact seek assimilation, as well as stories in which neither assimilation, nor integration is successful.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on minority-owned commercial banks in the USA. Design/methodology/approach – The authors examine performance differences between African-American (AA) commercial banks and other minority (OM)-owned banks. Also, the authors compare AA bank performance with that of their peer-group banking institutions. Findings – Employing data both before and after the recessionary period of 2008-2009, the authors find significant performance differences between minority ownership categories. For example, prior to 2008, AA banks held a significant advantage over OM-owned banks in net interest income as a percentage of average assets. This competitive advantage was somewhat offset by relatively weak loan portfolios and failure to contain costs. The 2008 crisis served to exacerbate the negatives of African-American banks while their positive differences essentially disappeared. Originality/value – The focus is different than the previous studies on minority-owned banks. The authors are especially interested in how AA banks have fared – relative to banking industry peer institutions, but also, relative to OM-owned banks.

The withdrawal of American troops from Iraq marks the beginning of a new stage in the history of that country. Iraq once again becomes a sovereign independent state. From now on, the huge task of ensuring security and putting an end to the terrible internal strife must be entrusted to the local authority. It is crucial to find a compromise solution to the Sunni-Shiite conflict. To achieve this end, the central power has to be really inclusive, giving the Sunnis their legitimate place in governing the country. The worst scenario would be the establishment of a Shiite-dominated regime that is prone to neglect the grievances of the Sunni population. The rights of the Kurdish minority, too, have to be safeguarded unless the state falls apart. Judging by their past behavior, however, it is hard to believe in the goodwill and adequate judgment of Iraqi politicians. The author concludes that the situation may well get worse before it starts to better off.

The authors studied more than 1 million Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and White seventh graders in a statewide California testing program between 2003 and 2008, examining their reading and math achievement. AAPI student performance is often reported as an aggregate in discussions of the success of schoolchildren and issues of racial and ethnic achievement gaps. The authors disaggregated the performance of 13 AAPI subgroups and found significant achievement gaps between White Americans and their AAPI peers in reading and math. The data refuted the premise of the model minority myth. The evidence indicated that AAPI students are diverse in their achievements and demonstrate a continuum of academic performance.

The authors examined whether minority women alumni from an online degree program at American Public University System (APUS) were able to use their degree to further their careers. Alumni minority women were surveyed to determine if the education they obtained prepared them for their current job, opened new doors for job opportunities, opened doors for promotions, and/or enhanced their ability for a specific career field. It is important to understand the unique needs of minority women students in an online study environment.

This study focuses on the depiction of homosexuality in American films. It is intended to identify the images of gays depicted in American films as well as the characteristics of American gay movies. It incorporates library research by applying an analytical descriptive approach in analyzing the data. The symbol and reflective theory is used to analyze 18 American movies and 14 gay films from other countries in the early 2000s. It shows that gay films can attract audiences by describing gays as the objects for laughs; gays revealing their sexual identities; sexual scenes of gays; masculine gay men; and violence in gay life. They appear in genres like drama, comedy, romance, detective, western, and horror/mystery with two images of gay people shown in American gay movies; they are the portrait of gays as a minority and the pessimism. However, it also shows that some American gay films picture good gay life, happy gay couples, gay marriage, etc.

Investigating the relationship between immigration, middleman minority status, transnationalism, and U.S. foreign trade, the authors assembled a census-based data file that contains aggregate-level variables for 88 foreign-born groups by national origin between 1980 and 1990. They regressed immigrant characteristics and immigration volume upon time-lagged import/export statistics from the same 88 nations between 1985 and 1995. Results show the independent influence on exports of immigrant entrepreneurship, transnationalism, and middleman minority status. But these variables, exhaustively derived from the existing literature, had no effect on U.S. imports; they only affected exports. The authors propose that the discrepancy between imports and exports arises because of the dominance of English as a world business language. In this situation, foreigners need no help from immigrants when they export to the United States; but native-born, monolingual Americans need the help of bicultural immigrants when they export. The empirical results suggest that immigrant entrepreneurs enhance the United States' exports and thus reduce the United States' balance of payments deficit.

The present study contextualizes how symbolism is employed by writers of ethnically minority in the United States as an avenue of their agency and criticism against the dominant white perspective. The history of American minorities is marred with legacy of racial discrimination and segregation which highlights the inequality of race. Literature as a cultural production captures the experiences of the marginalized and the use of symbolism is intended to transform themes into the field of aesthetics. This study is a qualitative research which is conducted through the post-nationalist American Studies framework in order to focus on the minorities’ experience instead of the Anglo-Saxon outlook. The object of the study is three playscripts written from authors from Mexican-American, African-American and Asian-American to emphasize how discrimination is faced by multi-ethnic. The finding suggests how symbolism in these literary works intends to counter the stereotypical representation of Mexican-American, aligns with the passive resistance of the Civil Right Movement and subvert binary opposition of East and West which exoticizing the East. Keywords : minority literature in the U.S , symbolism, post-national

Judged by the literary research conducted over the last decades of the previous and the first decade of this century, not only was drama an illegitimate offspring in the American literature but was also treated as a weak premature-born child in the postmodernist thought in general. A stage cohabitation of the postmodern experiment and a realist frame in the contemporary theatre is well illustrated by the two popular contemporary playwrights: Sam Shepard and David Mamet. By their creative opus, not only in the fields of drama and theatre, but also in other literary genres (poetry, essay) as well as in film, through a variety of different characters and situations, these two authors reveal a rich variety of the many possible variations of American social (con)text. The society will be read in their plays as a unique cultural text outside which, as Derrida said, there is nothing. America, its myths and contemporary cultural industry, its class, racial and gender conflicts and the two authors established a mutual set of influences. The playwrights borrow raw materials from the treasury of mass culture (or should it, to be true to the new consumer culture, be more appropriate to say a warehouse) break it down and re-assemble fragments into collages that articulate the contemporary issues in more condensed, more intense and more effective ways. Mamet and Shepard borrow from the contemporary culture only to pay it back with interest: they endow the cultural (con)text with a richer content, impregnated with meaning.

A travers une étude interculturelle détaillée et comparée de la production théâtrale minoritaire canadienne et américaine, ma thèse cherche à mettre en lumière les les apports thématiques et esthétiques du théâtre multi-ethnicque nord-américain contemporain à la tradition anglo-américaine du 20ème siècle. Les communautés asiatiques, africaines et aborigènes sont retenues comme poste d'observation privilégié de l'expression esthétique de la condition multiculturelle postcoloniale dans le théâtre nord-américain de la période allant de 1972 à nos jours. Sur base d'un corpus de pièces de théâtre, ma recherche m'a permis de redéfinir les grandes articulations des notions d'hybridité, d'identité et de communauté/nation postcoloniale.<p><p>Through a detailed cross-cultural approach of the English Canadian and American minority theatrical production, my thesis aims to identify the thematic and aesthetic contributions of multi-ethnic North American drama to the Anglo-American tradition of the 20th century. My study examines North American drama from the vantage points of African, Asian, and Native communities from 1972 until today. Relying on a number of case studies, my research opened up new avenues for rethinking the notions of hybridity and identity in relation to the postcolonial community/nation. <p><br>Doctorat en Langues et lettres<br>info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This thesis argues that twentieth-century American women playwrights spearhead the drama of transformation, and their plays become resistance discourses that protest, subvert, or change the representation of the female self in community. Many create antisocial, deviant, and self-reflexive characters who become misfits, criminals, or activists in order to lay bare women's moral-psychological crises in community. This thesis highlights how selected women playwrights engage with, and question various dominant, regional, racial, or ethnic female communities in order to redefine themselves. Sophie Treadwell's Machinal and Marsha Norman's 'night, Mother are representative texts that explore how the dominant culture can pose a barrier for radical women who long for self-fulfillment. To cultivate their personhood, working class Caucasian women are forced to go against their existing community so as to seek sexual freedom and reproductive rights, which are regarded as new forms of resistance or transgression. While they struggle hard to conform to the traditional, gendered notion of female altruism, self-sacrifice and care ethics, they cannot hide their discontent with the gendered division of labor. They are troubled doubly by the fact that they have to work in the public sphere, but conform to their gender roles in the private sphere. Different female protagonists resort to extreme homicidal or suicidal measures in order to assert their radical, contingent subjectivities, and become autonomous beings. By becoming antisocial or deviant characters, they reject their traditional conformity, and emphasize the arbitrariness and performativity of all gender roles. Treadwell and Norman both envision how the dominant Caucasian female community must experience radical changes in order to give rise to a new womanhood. Using Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart and Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun as examples, this thesis demonstrates the difficulties women may face when living in disparate communities. The selected texts show that Southern women and African-American women desperately crave for their distinct identities, while they long to be accepted by others. Their subjectivity is a constant source of anxiety, but some women can form strong psychological bonds with women from the same community, empowering them to make new life choices. To these women, their re-fashioned self becomes a means to reexamine the dominant white culture and their racial identity. African-American women resist the discourse of assimilation, and re-identify with their African ancestry, or pan-Africanism. In the relatively traditional southern community, women can subvert the conventional southern belle stereotypes. They assert their selfhood by means of upward mobility, sexual freedom, or the rejection of woman's reproductive imperative. The present study shows these women succeed in establishing their personhood when they refuse to compromise with the dominant ways, as well as the regional, racial communal consciousness. Maria Irene Fornes' Fefu and Her Friends and Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles are analyzed to show how women struggle to claim their dialogic selfhood in minoritarian communities (New England Community and Jewish Community). Female protagonists maintain dialogues with other women in the same community, while they choose their own modes of existence, such as single parenthood or political activism. The process of transformation shows that women are often disturbed by their moral consciousness, a result of their acceptance of gender roles and their submission to patriarchal authority. Their transgressive behaviors enable them to claim their body and mind, and strive for a new source of personhood. Both playwrights also advocate women's ability to self-critique, to differentiate the self from the Other, to allow the rise of an emergent self in the dialectical flux of inter-personal and intra-personal relations. The present study reveals that twentieth-century American female dramatists emphasize relationality in their pursuit of self. However, the transformation of the self can only be completed by going beyond, while remaining in dialogue with the dominant, residual, or emergent communities. For American women playwrights, the emerging female selves come with a strong sense of "in-betweenness," for it foregrounds the individualistic and communal dimensions of women, celebrating the rise of inclusive, mutable, and dialogic subjectivities.

In this study, I examine the dramatization of violence against the female body in contemporary drama by women and the purpose behind their representational approaches. I concentrate on the representation of three types that I consider inclusive of other minor forms of violence: the political, the medical, and the social violations of the female body. In chapter one, I study the dramatic representation of political violence against women as their bodies become ideological expressions of their lands. This chapter analyzes Suzan-Lori Parks' Venus and Naomi Wallace's In the Heart of America. These dramas represent the violation of women's bodies to parallel the violation and rape of their lands that are effeminized by their subjugation to the dominant powers of the world. In chapter two, I examine the representation of medical violence against women's bodies as connoting the lower status of the female body within patriarchy. The dramas of this chapter, Louise Page's Tissue and Margaret Edson's Wit, illustrate how the female body is dehumanized and devalued by a patriarchal medical practice that fails to recognize the distinctive physical and mental needs of women. Finally, in chapter three, I discuss the dramatic representation of social violence as the most inclusive form of aggression against women. The plays of this chapter, Caryl Churchill's Vinegar Tom and Maria Irene Fornes' The Conduct of Life, emphasize the masculine fear of and intimidation by the female body's sexuality and productivity, which instigates all types of physical violence against women within the social context. In the conclusion, I discuss Eve Ansler's The Vagina Monologues as a piece of performance art that instigates an active type of opposition against women's subjugations and violations. The activism of this type of drama and its effectiveness in enforcing change upon women's lives makes it an excellent extension to the type of ideas and notions brought about in this dissertation.<br>Department of English

In her novel Arabian Jazz, Diana Abu-Jaber attempts to explore the Arab American identity as something new; as an identity that exists related to, but ultimately separate from, the Arab and American identities from which it was originally created. This thesis discusses the emergence of the depiction of the Arab American female identity in the novel, examining how the characters explore issues of race, class, imperialism, and sex within both the Arab and the American cultures as those issues shape female identity. The thesis also presents a rhetorical analysis of the speeches that allow the characters a voice with respect to how identity is shaped and reshaped throughout the novel.

Through an analysis of the film Who Killed Vincent Chin? and the archival documents of the American Citizens for Justice, Chapter 1 reads the racially motivated murder of Vincent Chin in 1982 as not only a profound event of domestic 1980s Japanophobia, but as a pivotal social drama that enacted the techno-orientalist interpellation of the contemporary Asian American liberal subject. Through the Japanophobic 1980’s white American imaginary, the Asian body became conflated with that of the automobile itself, and that conversely Vincent Chin underwent a Deleuzian “becoming-car,” setting a precedent for contemporary techno-orientalism. However, this chapter also argues that the Asian American activist response to Chin’s death did not dispel this techno-orientalization, but reconfigured it through a politics of respectability that enabled a consolidation of model minority ideology even as they overtly acted to dispel the concept.

While the model minority stereotype depicts Asian Americans as having somehow “made it” in American society, rarely does the discourse involve Asian American athletes. The purpose of this chapter is to delineate how race and the model minority myth were an integral part of the media coverage and affected perceptions of the phenomenon known colloquially as “Linsanity,” which charted the unprecedented rise of Jeremy Lin. In 2012, Jeremy Lin became one of the most famous players in the NBA. By exploring the popular press coverage of this event, fueled by the Internet and social media, the intersection of the model minority myth and athletics are investigated. Through a combination of media critique and analysis, narrative, psychological literature, and coverage of other Asian and Asian American athletes, the authors illustrate how racism was a prominent factor and a significant part of the everyday discourse that permeated the coverage of Jeremy Lin.

Peer victimization is a problem for children across all demographic categories; however, peer victimization of racial and ethnic minority students is a unique problem that requires analysis and targeted intervention strategies. Racial and ethnic minority students endure a particular form of victimization whereby children target each other's ancestry, physical features, religion, cultural traditions, and immigration status. In this chapter, the authors discuss several types of racial/ethnic peer victimization. Next, they examine data pertaining to racial/ethnic victimization among children in the United States. This section includes reports of a recent uptick in racial/ethnic harassment associated with the candidacy and election of President Donald Trump. The authors use cognitive development theory, social reflection theory, and social identity theory to shed light on the causes of racial/ethnic peer victimization. Finally, they outline three leading anti-victimization programs that could be implemented to reduce racial/ethnic peer victimization among children.

This chapter will highlight the experiences of underrepresented minority students who are members of majority Greek-letter organizations at two institutions of higher learning located in the Midwest. The authors will explore the reasons why students joined majority Greek-letter organizations as opposed to those associated with their ethnicity/race. In addition, peer-to-peer perceptions, sense of mattering and belonging, and interest in upward mobility within their respective organizations will be examined.

This chapter provides a critical review of research on Asian international students' educational experiences in American higher education, highlighting key findings and identifying trends and dominant narratives that account for adjustment struggles, issues, stresses, and challenges. The authors argue that despite a large amount of research on the complex realities associated with Asian international students' adjustment experiences, such as the academic, the psychological, the sociocultural, and the linguistic, the discourse on model minority stereotypes has yet to include meaningful research on Asian international students. In an effort to advance the theoretical underpinnings for research on Asian international students, a new Transitory Accommodation Model (TAM) is presented, focusing primarily on academic pressure and motivation, academic self-efficacy, and acculturation to a new academic environment. The model builds on existing theoretical principles associated with academic self-worth, coping ability, and social connectedness within a new culture and academic setting. Implications for future research are also discussed.

While mentoring is part of being a faculty member, Black faculty carry the heavy burden of being perceived by colleagues and students to be the only ones who can adequately mentor minority students. With this heavy burden of mentoring on top of teaching, service, and research, many Black faculty are unable to balance the load, and ultimately one or more areas of their teaching, service, and research suffer. This chapter provides guidance, strategies, and tools from the authors that provide Black faculty with the skills necessary to be successful in academia and avoid burnout. This chapter also provides personal insights from the authors' experiences with burnout.

There are numerous national minorities in Croatia supported by the state in their maintenance of minority languages, cultures and traditions. And many of these minorities with songs, dance and customs cherish their own literature, meaning poetry, prose, and drama written by their members in minority languages or in Croatian. These works are mostly known among members of the minorities, but sometimes it is difficult to find the way to readers of the majority of the population. An example of such a minority literature with a long tradition is literary creation of the Czech, who have been living in today’s Croatia for over two hundred years. Nowadays regularly or occasionally there are about thirty authors who write mostly in Czech, but to come to the readership, some of them have been translating their work into the Croatian language lately or leaving their mother tongue and starting to create in Croatian. Are Croatia’s minority works known and to what extent? What are the possibilities of writers using minority languages to publish their works? Why are minority literary works important, what can they offer to a broader readership and in what way can they enrich Croatian literature? How could they reach the majority population and could they wake up the interest beyond Croatian borders? And what difficulties do minority writers encounter? In the presentation, we will use the example of Czech minority literary works in Croatia to answer these and other issues related to minority literature emerging in Croatia, but remaining unknown to the Croatian public.

As we probe to understand the experiences of Black women administrators, we ask ourselves one central question: “Did you get the memo?” The authors encountered obstacles and opportunities throughout their leadership journeys, questioning how they missed the memo on career mobility as two established Black administrators at a minority-serving institution. As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20; this research study aims to explore their lived experiences with mentorship and sponsorship and share career mobility tactical strategies to improve the pipeline for Black leaders in the academy. To do so, they applied a duo ethnography methodology that embraced the notion of narratives and storytelling and—framed by Collin's Black Feminist Thought—to amplify intersectional experiences and views by giving voice to their unique experiences as Black women administrators.

This essay explores the ways in which African American authors of that era reclaim the slave past as a site of memory for a nation eager to forget. Lucille Clifton’s Generations (1976), Alex Haley’s Roots (1976), Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada (1976), and Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979) are the chapter’s main focus. These works resist the tide of historical amnesia and “lost cause” mythology that would minimize or relegate the enslaved to mere props in the larger Civil War drama of rupture and reconciliation. By centering the stories of the enslaved as ancestral foundations of post-civil rights black life, these authors promote a model for historical memory and genealogy that elevates black resilience.

The United States produced a number of early utopian visions of suburban dispersal, demonstrating that Americans had inherited some of the anti-urban tendencies of their British forebears. An early feminist science-fiction novel by Mary Griffith insisted that cities could be great, but she was decidedly in the minority. After consuming British science fiction in the 1870s, American authors dominated utopian literature in the 1880s, many providing it with new urgency by engaging head-on with the rise of the industrial corporation. These writers were a heterogeneous bunch—ranging from math teachers to Spiritualist bohemians—but while they were often politically opposed to one another, they were consistent in their concept of utopia: life in large, complex cities such as New York or Boston was maddening, and a new world of glass, metal, synthetic stone, whirring machines, and, most importantly, endless greenery, needed to rise in place of the terrible city.

Aim/Purpose: This paper provides the results of the preliminary analysis of the findings of an ongoing study that seeks to examine the social media use, cultural and political awareness, civic engagement, issue prioritization, and social activism of Gen Z students enrolled at four different institutional types located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The aim of this study is to look at the group as a whole as well as compare findings across populations. The institutional types under consideration include a mid-sized majority serving or otherwise referred to as a traditionally white institution (TWI) located in a small coastal city on the Atlantic Ocean, a small Historically Black University (HBCU) located in a rural area, a large community college located in a county that is a mixture of rural and suburban and which sits on the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania, and graduating high school students enrolled in career and technical education (CTE) programs in a large urban area. This exploration is purposed to examine the behaviors and expectations of Gen Z students within a representative American region during a time of tremendous turmoil and civil unrest in the United States. Background: Over 74 million strong, Gen Z makes up almost one-quarter of the U.S. population. They already outnumber any current living generation and are the first true digital natives. Born after 1996 and through 2012, they are known for their short attention spans and heightened ability to multi-task. Raised in the age of the smart phone, they have been tethered to digital devices from a young age with most having the preponderance of their childhood milestones commemorated online. Often called Zoomers, they are more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation and are on track to be the most well-educated generation in history. Gen Zers in the United States have been found in the research to be progressive and pro-government and viewing increasing racial and ethnic diversity as positive change. Finally, they are less likely to hold xenophobic beliefs such as the notion of American exceptionalism and superiority that have been popular with by prior generations. The United States has been in a period of social and civil unrest in recent years with concerns over systematic racism, rampant inequalities, political polarization, xenophobia, police violence, sexual assault and harassment, and the growing epidemic of gun violence. Anxieties stirred by the COVID-19 pandemic further compounded these issues resulting in a powder keg explosion occurring throughout the summer of 2020 and leading well into 2021. As a result, the United States has deteriorated significantly in the Civil Unrest Index falling from 91st to 34th. The vitriol, polarization, protests, murders, and shootings have all occurred during Gen Z’s formative years, and the limited research available indicates that it has shaped their values and political views. Methodology: The Mid-Atlantic region is a portion of the United States that exists as the overlap between the northeastern and southeastern portions of the country. It includes the nation’s capital, as well as large urban centers, small cities, suburbs, and rural enclaves. It is one of the most socially, economically, racially, and culturally diverse parts of the United States and is often referred to as the “typically American region.” An electronic survey was administered to students from 2019 through 2021 attending a high school dual enrollment program, a minority serving institution, a majority serving institution, and a community college all located within the larger mid-Atlantic region. The survey included a combination of multiple response, Likert scaled, dichotomous, open ended, and ordinal questions. It was developed in the Survey Monkey system and reviewed by several content and methodological experts in order to examine bias, vagueness, or potential semantic problems. Finally, the survey was pilot tested prior to implementation in order to explore the efficacy of the research methodology. It was then modified accordingly prior to widespread distribution to potential participants. The surveys were administered to students enrolled in classes taught by the authors all of whom are educators. Participation was voluntary, optional, and anonymous. Over 800 individuals completed the survey with just over 700 usable results, after partial completes and the responses of individuals outside of the 18-24 age range were removed. Findings: Participants in this study overwhelmingly were users of social media. In descending order, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Tik Tok were the most popular social media services reported as being used. When volume of use was considered, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and Twitter were the most cited with most participants reporting using Instagram and Snapchat multiple times a day. When asked to select which social media service they would use if forced to choose just one, the number one choice was YouTube followed by Instagram and Snapchat. Additionally, more than half of participants responded that they have uploaded a video to a video sharing site such as YouTube or Tik Tok. When asked about their familiarity with different technologies, participants overwhelmingly responded that they are “very familiar” with smart phones, searching the Web, social media, and email. About half the respondents said that they were “very familiar” with common computer applications such as the Microsoft Office Suite or Google Suite with another third saying that they were “somewhat familiar.” When asked about Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Blackboard, Course Compass, Canvas, Edmodo, Moodle, Course Sites, Google Classroom, Mindtap, Schoology, Absorb, D2L, itslearning, Otus, PowerSchool, or WizIQ, only 43% said they were “very familiar” with 31% responding that they were “somewhat familiar.” Finally, about half the students were either “very” or “somewhat” familiar with operating systems such as Windows. A few preferences with respect to technology in the teaching and learning process were explored in the survey. Most students (85%) responded that they want course announcements and reminders sent to their phones, 76% expect their courses to incorporate the use of technology, 71% want their courses to have course websites, and 71% said that they would rather watch a video than read a book chapter. When asked to consider the future, over 81% or respondents reported that technology will play a major role in their future career. Most participants considered themselves “informed” or “well informed” about current events although few considered themselves “very informed” or “well informed” about politics. When asked how they get their news, the most common forum reported for getting news and information about current events and politics was social media with 81% of respondents reporting. Gen Z is known to be an engaged generation and the participants in this study were not an exception. As such, it came as no surprise to discover that, in the past year more than 78% of respondents had educated friends or family about an important social or political issue, about half (48%) had donated to a cause of importance to them, more than a quarter (26%) had participated in a march or rally, and a quarter (26%) had actively boycotted a product or company. Further, about 37% consider themselves to be a social activist with another 41% responding that aren’t sure if they would consider themselves an activist and only 22% saying that they would not consider themselves an activist. When asked what issues were important to them, the most frequently cited were Black Lives Matter (75%), human trafficking (68%), sexual assault/harassment/Me Too (66.49%), gun violence (65.82%), women’s rights (65.15%), climate change (55.4%), immigration reform/deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) (48.8%), and LGBTQ+ rights (47.39%). When the schools were compared, there were only minor differences in social media use with the high school students indicating slightly more use of Tik Tok than the other participants. All groups were virtually equal when it came to how informed they perceived themselves about current events and politics. Consensus among groups existed with respect to how they get their news, and the community college and high school students were slightly more likely to have participated in a march, protest, or rally in the last 12 months than the university students. The community college and high school students were also slightly more likely to consider themselves social activists than the participants from either of the universities. When the importance of the issues was considered, significant differences based on institutional type were noted. Black Lives Matter (BLM) was identified as important by the largest portion of students attending the HBCU followed by the community college students and high school students. Less than half of the students attending the TWI considered BLM an important issue. Human trafficking was cited as important by a higher percentage of students attending the HBCU and urban high school than at the suburban and rural community college or the TWI. Sexual assault was considered important by the majority of students at all the schools with the percentage a bit smaller from the majority serving institution. About two thirds of the students at the high school, community college, and HBCU considered gun violence important versus about half the students at the majority serving institution. Women’s rights were reported as being important by more of the high school and HBCU participants than the community college or TWI. Climate change was considered important by about half the students at all schools with a slightly smaller portion reporting out the HBCU. Immigration reform/DACA was reported as important by half the high school, community college, and HBCU participants with only a third of the students from the majority serving institution citing it as an important issue. With respect to LGBTQ rights approximately half of the high school and community college participants cited it as important, 44.53% of the HBCU students, and only about a quarter of the students attending the majority serving institution. Contribution and Conclusion: This paper provides a timely investigation into the mindset of generation Z students living in the United States during a period of heightened civic unrest. This insight is useful to educators who should be informed about the generation of students that is currently populating higher education. The findings of this study are consistent with public opinion polls by Pew Research Center. According to the findings, the Gen Z students participating in this study are heavy users of multiple social media, expect technology to be integrated into teaching and learning, anticipate a future career where technology will play an important role, informed about current and political events, use social media as their main source for getting news and information, and fairly engaged in social activism. When institutional type was compared the students from the university with the more affluent and less diverse population were less likely to find social justice issues important than the other groups. Recommendations for Practitioners: During disruptive and contentious times, it is negligent to think that the abounding issues plaguing society are not important to our students. Gauging the issues of importance and levels of civic engagement provides us crucial information towards understanding the attitudes of students. Further, knowing how our students gain information, their social media usage, as well as how informed they are about current events and political issues can be used to more effectively communicate and educate. Recommendations for Researchers: As social media continues to proliferate daily life and become a vital means of news and information gathering, additional studies such as the one presented here are needed. Additionally, in other countries facing similarly turbulent times, measuring student interest, awareness, and engagement is highly informative. Impact on Society: During a highly contentious period replete with a large volume of civil unrest and compounded by a global pandemic, understanding the behaviors and attitudes of students can help us as higher education faculty be more attuned when it comes to the design and delivery of curriculum. Future Research This presentation presents preliminary findings. Data is still being collected and much more extensive statistical analyses will be performed.