Saartje BaartJnan was a South African woman who signed a contract in 1810 that effectively made her the property of two white men wishing to exhibit her in Europe because of the shape and color of her body. In this text 1 examine two very different categories of representations of Baartman. First, I discuss images that were produced during Baartman's lifetime that discursively transformed her from a black woman with an identity into a pathologized body known as the Hottentot Venus, and second, I discuss the contemporary black female artists who are producing art inspired by Baartman in order to problematize the racist and sexist assumptions that have been inscribed on the black female body. My research encompasses important scholarship done by white feminist art historians, as well as that by black feminist theorists, and my thoughts on this subject have also been informed tremendously by work that has been done on the visual culture of slavery and on racist stereotypes by post-colonial scholars.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.97824 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Skelly, Julia |
| Contributors | Nelson, Charmaine (Supervisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Art History) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: NNNNNNNNN, Theses scanned by McGill Library., Theses scanned by McGill Library. |
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