Imagining the Black Female Body Reconciling Image in Print and Visual Culture

This volume explores issues of black female identity through the various "imaginings" of the black female body in print and visual culture.  Contributions emphasize the ways in which the black female body is framed and how black women (and their allies) have sought to write themselves back into social discourses on their terms.

Public Property: On Black Women, Bodies, and First Lady Michelle Obama - Carol E. Henderson * Racing Sex~Sexing Race: The Invention of the Black Feminine Body - Kaila Adia Story * Disembodiments: Ellen Gallagher's Watery Metamorphoses - Ana Nunes * Stigmata : Embodying the Scars of Slavery - Venetria K. Patton * 'Pull Up to the Bumper': Fashion and Queerness in Grace Jones' One Man Show - Maria J. Guzman * Images that Sell: The Black Female Body Imag(in)ed in 1960s and 1970s Magazine Ads - Michelle L. Filling * Four Women, For Women: Black Women - All Grown Up - Debra A. Powell-Wright * The Lower Stratum of History: The Grotesque Comic Stereotypes of Suzan-Lori Parks and Kara Walker - Julie Burrell * Navel-erasing: Androgyny and Self-Making in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother - Stacie Selmon McCormick * 'If Rigor is Our Dream': The Re-Membering of Violence by Black Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance - Zetta Elliott * "You . . .You Remind Me of . . .": A Black Feminist's Rejection of the White Imagination - Maria del Guadalupe Davidson

Carol E. Henderson is Associate Director of Black American Studies and Associate Professor of English and Black American Studies at the University of Delaware.