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This study explores controlling images as essential to the representation of black women’s lives within the media, especially the comic book character, Storm from the X-Men series. The researcher uses content analysis to examine the graphic images, text and dialogue of the comic books chosen for this study. Furthermore, the researcher juxtaposes Storm to the main controlling images that Patricia Hill Collins discusses in her seminal work, Black Feminist Thought, but also to expand this discussion to include the stereotype of the Magical Negro.

African-Americans have been portrayed in stereotypical entertainment roles since their arrival into American society. Before film and television were developed, minstrel and side-shows were the source of entertainment at African-American’s expense. Minstrel shows were performed by White individuals dressed to impersonate Blacks and behaved in a White inter-pretation of Black behavior (Pieterse, 1992, pg. 134). African American women in particular were portrayed in three primary stereotypical ways: the Mammy, the Jezebel, and the Sap-phire. This research examines the relationship between the stereotypes and these historical typecasts of African-American women are relevant to Black director Tyler Perry’s popular character Mabel Simmons, better known as ‘Madea’.

Octavia Butler’s Kindred is often looked at as a historical science fiction novel. While there are critics who have discussed the slave narrative aspects of the novel, the way Butler tackles authorship and what it means to re-write history has been overlooked. By examining the way Butler uses authorship to question authorial authority, one can see the way Butler uses her protagonist to revise history and reclaim historical figures. This process of reclamation and revision enables Butler to examine the historical gaps that have been created and the way enslaved blacks have been caricatured and further dehumanized. Through her protagonist, Butler is able to endow these historical figures with complex identities and emotions and challenges what it means to be a viable authorial voice.

Women commonly sold goods on the streets of New Orleans throughout the city‘s colonial and antebellum history. Forming a significant presence among the city‘s market places, they sold various food items which included coffee, calas, and pralines. Perhaps the most popular of the African-American street vendors was the praline women. They attracted the attention of visitors as well as residents. Despite the popularity of these treats, the highly visible and enterprising praline vendors were simultaneously celebrated and caricatured by white observers who depicted them as mammy figures not only in store advertisements and logos, but also in everyday annotations.

Esta dissertação versa sobre a figura da mãe-preta como uma imagem de controle, tomando o feminismo negro enquanto perspectiva epistemológica. O problema de pesquisa observado é de que modo a mãe-preta constitui-se enquanto um estereótipo racial nas artes plásticas e como é discutida a partir da produção de distintas autorias. Sobretudo, quais as alterações nessa representação quando mulheres negras passam a produzir obras que relacionam gênero e raça. Os capítulos que compõem essa pesquisa procuram responder de que forma a sociologia abordou o tema de raça e gênero. Ainda, como a perspectiva feminista negra se inscreve na sociologia apresentando uma leitura interseccional e que busca colocar a mulher negra conforme o sujeito central da produção de conhecimento. Também como a cultura e, especificamente, as artes visuais são uma ferramenta através da qual são criados estereótipos raciais que operam sustentando as desigualdades. Com isso, as perguntas centrais que norteiam o trabalho são: O que criam artisticamente as mulheres negras sobre si mesmas quando possuem essa oportunidade? Quais as respostas que existem para questionar e repensar a figura da mãe-preta? Quem é a mãe-preta sob a perspectiva de mulheres negras? / This dissertation deals with the black mother as a control image, with black feminism as an epistemological perspective. The research problem observed is how the black mother constitutes as a black stereotype in the plastic arts and how it is discussed from the production of different authorships. Above all, what are the changes in this representation when black women begin to produce works that relate gender and race. The chapters that compose this research seek to answer, how sociology has approached the theme of race and gender. How the black feminist perspective is inscribed in the sociology presenting an intersectional reading and which seeks to place the black woman as the central subject of the production of knowledge. Also how culture and specifically the visual arts are a tool through which black stereotypes are created and operate sustaining inequalities. With this, the central question guiding the work is: what do black women create about themselves when they have the opportunity? What answers exist to question and rethink the black mother? Who is the black mother of black women?

Stereotypes and myths are created by media to simplify and mystify reality. The two are used to form negative stereotypical images that are used as tools of social oppression in today’s white patriarchy. This essay will focus on how Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye depicts black womanhood and motherhood and resists the reductive images of black women through the narrative technique. In the text we find the stereotypical images of the Mammy and the Matriarch in the character Pauline "Polly" Breedlove, both simplifying and mystifying black motherhood but also condescending towards African-American family constellations. The text resists these images by making readers inhabit Polly who at first fits in to the two archetypes, only to then give us additional information and use an engaging narrative technique that invites the reader to decide if Polly really is the Mammy and the Matriarch.

This study examines African American stereotypes in film. I studied six directors, Kathryn Bigelow, Spike Lee, the Russo Brothers, Ryan Coogler, Tate Taylor, and Dee Rees; and six films Detroit, BlacKkKlansman, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Help, and Mudbound. Using the framework of critical race theory and auteur theory, I compared the common themes between the films and directors. The main purpose of my study is to see if White or Black directors predominantly used African American stereotypes. I found that both races of directors rely on stereotypes for different purposes. With Black directors, the stereotype was explained further through character development, while the White directors used the stereotype at face value with no further explanation.