Instant Vintage: Grad Student Makes History with Dissertation

(Remnants of my former life.)

Twelve years ago, Percival Bryce McAllister-Jenkins-Smith wouldn't have believed anyone who told him of the feat that he would accomplish at the end of his graduate school career.  Two weeks ago, after successfully defending his dissertation, McAllister-Jenkins-Smith was notified that he had become the first African American graduate student on record not to mention W.E.B. Du Bois in his work.  For McAllister-Jenkins-Smith, one of the newest graduates of Clarke University's Africana studies doctoral program, the accomplishment, though unintentional, is welcome.


"What I really set out to do," McAllister-Jenkins-Smith confessed, "was not to write a dissertation about hip-hop.  I just really didn't want to be the black student saying 'I'm writing about hip-hop' at one of those department cocktail hours.  I might as well be saying, 'Hey folks, another song leaked from the new Jay-Z album!'  Who wants to be that guy?"  In fact, McAllister-Jenkins-Smith's project, Potholes in My Lawn: A Conceptual History of the Lawn Jockey in the American Literary Canon 1896-1975, is nothing like hip-hop--that is, if you ignore the whole white obsession aspect of both subjects.  In his work, McAllister-Jenkins-Smith offers a treatise on the lawn jockey, a figure with a dubious history, that for many symbolizes America's racist past.  "[But] I wasn't concerned with any of that," McAllister-Jenkins-Smith says.  McAllister-Jenkins-Smith then went on to explain the debt he owed to Barthes and semiology, inevitably digressing into academic jargon that, ironically(?), signified nothing.

So, how did McAllister-Jenkins-Smith take up a black figure and not mention Du Bois in his final offering to his dissertation committee?  "It just never really dawned on me," he says.  "We're in a new era, you know?  And I just want my work to reflect that."

Though he made history by finding the past hardly useful, McAllister-Jenkins-Smith's future is incredibly bright.  He recently accepted a Sankofa Fellowship at a prestigious university.  Along with a lectureship, the award will allow him ample time to focus on turning his dissertation into his first book-length project. 

The response to McAllister-Jenkins-Smith's accomplishment has been mixed.  Department head Mtume Ali had only terse remarks for his former student, "He's still an artificial nigger."  Neither the university nor the Africana studies department plans to give McAllister-Jenkins-Smith special recognition.  However, a note will appear on Clarke's wikipedia page; McAllister-Jenkins-Smith is not currently listed in the notable alumni section.

Congratulations, Percival Bryce McAllister-Jenkins-Smith.  McDonald's salutes you.



N.B. Though he managed not to cite the godfather of black thought, McAllister-Jenkins-Smith did have extensive footnotes on Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison.



(Yeah, I'm rusty.  This was fun, though.)