Description
Book SynopsisExplorations of contemporary art have focused on issues of identity and race for some time. Few, however, have sought to investigate these themes by juxtaposing historical and contemporary frameworks. This book examines an especially charged icon - the black female body.
Trade Review"Rather than recycling the colonial approach to power and subjectivity, which defines the self through the ridicule of the other, Black Womanhood provides various textual, visual, and personal tactics that can contribute to re-imagining a more humane way forward."
* Woman's Art Journal *
"Twenty years ago, Barbara Kruger coined her now-infamous slogan, 'your body is a battleground,' in a campaign to increase awareness of how women's bodies are marketed as commodities. Visually stunning and intellectually provocative, Black Womanhood resurrects that dialogue and complicates an embattled body in which blackness is a catalyst, surface, symbol, subject, and object that, while transformative on many levels, continues to appear alarmingly vulnerable to exploitation and stereotyping."
* caa.reviews *
"A serious academic endeavor, suitable for scholars and the general public alike."
* Book News *
"This collection of essays is as richly insightful as it is beautifully produced. . . . The originality of the images and interpretations make this catalogue essential to understanding how fully clothed the unclothed body truly is."
* Publisher's Weekly *
Table of ContentsLenders to the Exhibition
Foreword / Brian P. Kennedy
Acknowledgments / Barbara Thompson
Introduction / Barbara Thompson
Part One | Iconic Ideologies of Womanhood: African Cultural Perspectives
1. The African Female Body in the Cultural Imagination / Barbara Thompson
2. African Women's Body Images in Postcolonial Discourse and Resistance to Neo-Crusaders / Ifi Amadiume
3. Les Parisiens d'Afrique: Mangbetu Women as Works of Art / Enid Schildkrout
Plates
Part Two | Colonizing Black Women: The Western Imaginary
4. The Black Female Body, the Postcard, and the Archives / Christraud Geary
5. The Body of a Myth: Embodying the Black Mammy Figure in Visual Culture / Kimberly Wallace-Sanders
Plates
Part Three | Meaning and Identity: Personal Journeys into Black Womanhood
6. Picturing the New Negro Woman / Deborah Willis
7. The Women Who Posed: Maudelle Bass and Florence Allen / Carla Williams
8. Housing and Homing the Black Female Body in France: Clixthe Beyala and the Legacy of Sarah Baartman and Josephine Backer / Ayo Abiétou Coly
9. Decolonizing Black Bodies: Personal Journeys in the Contemporary Voice / Barbara Thompson
Plates
Artists
Contributors
Bibliography
Index
