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Cited by 144Feminist Theory and Gender StudiesRace, History, and American SocietyDisability Rights and Representation

The DOI matches its Crossref record.

The “Batty” Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body

Hobson, Janell·2003·Hypatia
DOI 10.1111/j.1527-2001.2003.tb01414.x
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Abstract

I assess representations of black women's derrieres, which are often depicted as grotesque, despite attempts by some black women artists to create a black feminist aesthetic that recognizes the black female body as beautiful and desirable. Utilizing a black feminist disability theory, I revisit the history of the Hottentot Venus, which contributed to the shaping of this representational trope, and I identify a recurring struggle among these artists to recover the “unmirrored” black female body.

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Citations

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Research works printed but not linked: 24

  1. 10.1215/9780822382799 · DOI
  2. Mapplethorpe, 1986, The black book
  3. Goude, 1981, Jungle fever
  4. Gilman, 1985, Difference and pathology
  5. Cliff, 1993, Free Enterprise
  6. 10.2307/2953316 · DOI
  7. 10.1177/089124301015006003 · DOI
  8. Kant, 1997, Critique of judgment
  9. Gould, 1985, The flamingo's smile: Reflection in natural history
  10. Giddings, 1984, When and where 1 enter: The impact of black women on race and sex in America
  11. Cliff, 1984, Abeng
  12. Burnside, 1997, Spirits of the passage: The trans‐atlantic slave trade in the seventeenth century
  13. 10.1007/978-1-349-04043-8 · DOI
  14. Carroll, 2000, Beauty matters
  15. Bakhtin, 1981, The dialogic imagination: Four essays
  16. Pieterse, 1992, White on black: Images of Africa and blacks in Western popular culture
  17. Strother, 1999, Africans on stage, 1
  18. Lindfors, 1985, Courting the Hottentot Venus, Africa, 40
  19. Collins, 1990, Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and empowerment
  20. Willis, 2002, The black female body: A photographic history
  21. Barnes, 1997, Daughters of Caliban: Caribbean women in the twentieth century
  22. Giddings, 1995, Words of fire
  23. Thomson, 1997, Extraordinary bodies: Figuring disability in American culture and literature
  24. O’Grady, 1992, Olympia's maid: Reclaiming black female subjectivity, Afterimage, 20, 14, 10.1525/aft.1992.20.1.14 · DOI

Cited by

Metadata

Authors
Hobson, J.
Corresponding author
Hobson, Janell
Venue
Hypatia
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2003
Volume
18
Issue
4
Pages
87-105
ISSN
  • 0887-5367 (ISSN-L)
  • 1527-2001
DOI
10.1111/j.1527-2001.2003.tb01414.x
OpenAlex
W2046299384
Cited by
144
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 18 · 2013: 1 · 2012: 5
FWCI
3.59
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified, 6293 d)
Locations
Hypatia (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Feminist Theory and Gender Studies
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Race, History, and American Society
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Disability Rights and Representation
Keywords
Black female body, grotesque, buttocks, Hottentot Venus, representation of Black women, Black women artists

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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