Table Of ContentThe Routledge Companion to
Black Women’s Cultural Histories
In the social and cultural histories of women and feminism, Black women have long been
overlooked or ignored. The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories is an
impressive and comprehensive reference work for contemporary scholarship on the cultural
histories of Black women across the diaspora spanning different eras from ancient times into the
twenty-first century. Comprising over 30 chapters by a team of international contributors, the
Companion is divided into five parts:
• A fragmented past, an inclusive future
• Contested histories, subversive memories
• Gendered lives, racial frameworks
• Cultural shifts, social change
• Black identities, feminist formations
Within these sections, a diverse range of women, places, and issues is explored, including ancient
African queens, Black women in early modern European art and culture, enslaved Muslim
women in the antebellum United States, Sally Hemings, Phillis Wheatley, Black women writers
in early twentieth-century Paris, Black women, civil rights, South African apartheid, and sexual
violence and resistance in the United States in recent history.
The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories is essential reading for students
and researchers in Gender Studies, History, Africana Studies, and Cultural Studies.
Janell Hobson is Professor and Chair of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the
University at Albany, State University of New York, USA.
“I am humbled by this breathtaking collection of essays from an extraordinary group of scholars.
Spanning the diaspora and the millennia, this timely collection explores both familiar and new
areas of Black feminist historical analysis and cultural interrogation, highlighting new writings
on Black women’s intellectual traditions and challenging the silences in the archives that have
long denied women of color – both free and enslaved – their roles in making history. From the
queens of Ancient Egypt to modern day activists and leaders, there is much here for everyone.
This is an essential addition to bookshelves and classrooms everywhere!”
Kate Clifford Larson,
author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman,
Portrait of an American Hero
“The collection we need in this global moment, The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s
Cultural Histories reveals how Black women around the world are central to our current con-
ceptualizations of knowledge, politics, art, literature, feminisms, and survival. This set of essays
is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the struggles we all face and how, with Black
women as our guides, we can push for a better and vibrant future.”
Ashley D. Farmer, University of Texas at Austin, USA,
author of Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era
“The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories is unprecedented in its scope and
ambition. In 35 chapters, scholars from Africa, the Americas, and Europe, at different stages
of their careers, document the transformative creativity of Black women across the African
diaspora. Collectively these chapters demonstrate the complexity, strength, heterogeneity and
communal nature of Black women’s cultural history. They also inform our understanding of
race and gender today, by questioning white canonical constructions of culture and creativity
and finding new ways to narrate histories of those long silenced by archives and professional
historians. This bold new collection will shape the field of Black women’s cultural history for
some time to come.”
Kate Dossett, University of Leeds, UK,
author of Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal
The Routledge Companion
to Black Women’s Cultural
Histories
Edited by Janell Hobson
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Janell Hobson; individual chapters,
the contributors
The right of Janell Hobson to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hobson, Janell, 1973- editor.
Title: The Routledge companion to Black women’s cultural histories /
Janell Hobson.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge,
2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020041185 | ISBN 9780367198374 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780429243578 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Women, Black–History. | Women, Black–Social conditions. |
Women, Black–Social life and customs.
Classification: LCC HQ1163 .R68 2021 | DDC 305.48/896–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041185
ISBN: 978-0-367-19837-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-70755-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-24357-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
In memory of Carmen R. Gillespie
Contents
List of figures xi
List of contributors xiii
The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories:
An Introduction by Janell Hobson 1
PART I
A fragmented past, an inclusive future 11
1 Women are from Africa and men are from Europe 13
Monica Hanna
2 Priestess, queen, goddess: The divine feminine
in the kingdom of Kush 23
Solange Ashby
3 Queen Balqis, “Queen of Sheba” 35
Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban
4 Black women in early modern European art and culture 44
Paul H.D. Kaplan
5 Black women in early modern Spanish literature 57
Nicholas R. Jones
6 The legend of Lucy Negro 66
Joyce Green MacDonald
7 (Anti-)colonial assemblages: The history and reformulations
of Njinga Mbande 75
Daniel F. Silva
vviiii
Contents
PART II
Contested histories, subversive memories 87
8 Preserving the memories of precolonial Nigeria: Cultural narratives of
precolonial heroines 89
Aje-Ori Agbese
9 Nana Asma’u: A model for literate women Muslims 100
Beverly Mack
10 Finding “Fatima” among enslaved Muslim women in the antebellum
United States 109
Denise A. Spellberg
11 Phillis Wheatley and New England slavery 120
Jennifer Thorn
12 Sally Hemings: Writing the life of an enslaved woman 129
Annette Gordon-Reed
13 The persistence of Félicité Kina in the world of the Haitian Revolution:
Kinship, gender, and everyday resistance 137
Nathan H. Dize
14 The then and now of subjugation and empowerment: Marie Benoist’s
Portrait d’une négresse (1800) 146
James Smalls
PART III
Gendered lives, racial frameworks 157
15 A history of Black women in nineteenth-century France 159
Robin Mitchell
16 Living free: Self-emancipated women and queer formations of freedom 168
Vanessa M. Holden
17 “Blood, fire, and freedom”: Enslaved women and rebellion in
nineteenth-century Cuba 177
Michele Reid-Vazquez
18 Black women and Africana abolitionism 184
Nneka D. Dennie
19 Ethiopia’s woke women: The nineteenth century re-imagines Africa 194
Barbara McCaskill
viii
Contents
20 Singing power/sounding identity: The Black woman’s voice from hidden
Hush Arbors to the popular 204
Maya Cunningham
21 Jamettes, mas, and bacchanal: A culture of resistance in Trinidad and Tobago 213
Allison O. Ramsay
PART IV
Cultural shifts, social change 223
22 Wives and warriors: The royal women of Dahomey as representatives of
the kingdom 225
Lynne Ellsworth Larsen
23 Reframing Yaa Asantewaa through the shifting paradigms of African
historiography 236
Naaborko Sackeyfio-Lenoch
24 The Aba Women’s War of 1929 in Eastern Nigeria as anti-colonial protest 245
Egodi Uchendu and Uche Okonkwo
25 Black women writers in early twentieth-century Paris 255
Claire Oberon Garcia
26 The transnational Black feminist politics of Claudia Jones 266
Carole Boyce-Davies
27 Confronting apartheid: Black women’s internationalism in South Africa
and the United States 274
Nicholas Grant
28 Black feminisms, queer feminisms, trans feminisms: Meditating on Pauli
Murray, Shirley Chisholm, and Marsha P. Johnson against the erasure of
history 284
Jenn M. Jackson
PART V
Black identities, feminist formations 295
29 Traces of race, roots of gender: A genetic history 297
Amade M’charek
30 Is twerking African?: Dancing and diaspora as embodied knowledge on
YouTube 310
Kyra D. Gaunt
ix
