I want to examine Janelle Monáe's latest album, "The Age of Pleasure" as a work of art that imagines a sonically healing space and a world that centers Black queer joy as a form collective liberation.

Three possible texts that I want to use to analyze are: Audre Lorde's, "Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic As Power," bell hooks' All About Love, and Daphne Brooks' Liner Notes for Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound. I also really enjoy Jennifer Nash's analysis of love politics so that may also be a source I incorporate as a theoretical framework.

I mostly imagine this as a conventional essay, but I will publish it to my website in the form of a blog post so in a way, it's sort of a hybrid of the two presentation format styles.

Abstract: Janelle Monáe is lauded for their Afrofuturist lyrics that speak truth to power;  questioning political systems and ways of being, all layered under a catchy, danceable beat. In their most recent album, The Age of Pleasure, she departs from her ArchAndroid persona to create a world of pure joy and ecstasy. Monáe redefines post-2020 Pan-African sound by incorporating hip-hop, Afrobeat, reggae and Motown into their body of work and by doing so, she captures community and its sonic dimensions. Featuring Black matriarchs like Sister Nancy and Grace Jones and collaborating with Seun Kuti, the son of Nigerian revolutionary Fela Kuti, The Age of Pleasure is not only unapologetically Black and queer, it imagines what life would be like without white heteronormative patriarchy. This research positions Monáe’s latest work alongside Black feminist scholars who have imagined the possibilities of a world free from oppressive power structures and Black femme erotic creativity as a tool for transformation. Incorporating the writings of Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Jennifer Nash into this analysis will illuminate the ways in which Monáe’s Age of Pleasure is part of a larger Black queer feminist philosophy of radical love and acceptance as a method of resistance. It works against a system designed to categorize and control bodies and the ways people express love. Instead, Monáe imagines and creates for her listener, a more fluid, thriving world and asserts there is another way of being.

Annotated Bibliography: 

Audre Lorde. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” reprinted in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. (Pennsylvania: Crossing Press,1984). 

One of the most impactful Black women writers to have ever lived, Audre Lorde’s writings contextualizes Black queer feminism into an intellectual framework of analysis. In this essay, Lorde explores the uses of the erotic as a form of power and a source for intellectual information. Lorde’s definition of the erotic exists in a realm that is both deeply spiritual and feminine and by its very existence is dangerous to the white male patriarchal status quo. Lorde examines the 

etymology of erotic and draws connections to a feminist understanding of society and knowledge production. While there are so many Black queer theoretical frameworks that can be applied to Age of Pleasure, I believe Lorde’s analysis of the erotic is essential to understanding Monáe's intentions with the album. Applying Lorde’s interpretation of uses of the erotic helps to define Black queer excellence that lives in The Age of Pleasure.  

bell hooks. All About Love: New Visions. (New York: HarperCollins, 2001). 

While I originally was gravitated to this book for my own personal use, I believe bell hooks’ All About Love is another secondary source that allows the listener of Janelle Monáe’s album to realize the radical love politics that lives in The Age of Pleasure. hooks reflects on her own relationship with love and in doing so, outlines the process of self acceptance and society’s analysis of love. While listening to interviews of Monáe describing her process for writing the album, 

there were striking similarities to hooks’ interpretation of using love as a way of reimagining our communities and systems. Incorporating hooks into this analysis of Monáe’s album will further contextualize this album within a larger tradition of Black feminist scholarship.  

Dan Hassler-Forest. Boni, Marta (ed.) “The Politics of World Building Heteroglossia in Janelle Monáe’s Afrofuturist WondaLand.” in World Building. Transmedia, Fans, Industries. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017).

This essay examines political world building found in media, and the ways in which fantasy genres can reflect political visions. This research traces 1970s Afrofuturism as well as Janelle Monáe’s reinvigoration of this cultural movement 

in the 21st century. Through her lyrics and music, videos and stage performances, Monáe adopts the cultural logic of world building. Hassler-Forest argues Janelle Monáe’s strength as an artist to challenge white traditions of 

world-building, but also asserts her use of neoliberalism to convey her message. This research raises questions about Monáe’s work as a true example of transgressive art so this secondary source will be vital in analyzing her most 

recent album. Additionally, from a historiographical perspective, this essay is important to incorporate into my research to document what other scholars have 

said about her previous works. 

Daphne A. Brooks. Liner Notes For The Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black 

Feminist Sound. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021). Daphne Brooks’ monograph traces an entire century of Black women’s music archives and their intellectual inspirations; weaving together sonic pioneers such as Zora Neale Hurston and perspectives on Black queer feminist critique. Brooks explores the gendered and racial politics associated with blues and rock and roll sound. She asserts Black women’s music is part of a larger radical intellectual movement and includes Janelle Monáe in this framework. While I was familiar with Brooks’ argument from previous music historians, Liner Notes For The Revolution illuminated how Monáe’s work fit neatly within a larger body of Black queer feminist music tradition and how Afrofuturism and speculative fiction can empower listeners to believe another way of being is possible. Identifying Monáe’s work as part of an ancestral tradition while being uniquely their own, this source will be valuable to support my analysis of Monáe’s latest album, The Age of Pleasure. 

Janelle Monáe. The Age of Pleasure. Wondaland Bad Boy Atlantic Records. 2023. Audio Recording. 

Janelle Monáe’s album, Age of Pleasure, will be my primary source for this research project. In this departure from her usual Afrofuturist, speculative fiction style, Monáe places pleasure in the here and now; building a bridge between 

possible futures and what is within our reach. I will analyze the album and place it within a larger analysis of Black queer joy as a form of subversion and resistance. Incorporating feminist theorists such as Audre Lorde and early Black 

musicians like Gladys Bentley, I will explore Monáe’s 2023 album as a pan-African love note and a sonic tool for self-determination. 

I intend to close read passages from Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing that feature powerful storytelling from one character to another. I'd like to focus on the triangular relationship between Jojo, Pop, and Richie.

I may extend my analysis, comparing Parchman's psychological influence to Paul D's trauma and history told in Beloved by Toni Morrison.

I find the Black literary tradition of spectral storytelling compelling in the way it welds bonds of kinship throughout generations (across the living family and their ancestors), and how it shapes those bonds to be strong, or weakens them.

"Rememory" enlivens both of these tales of shared grief and pain and connects closely to experiences of the phantasmagorical. I believe Conjure/Hoodoo, rememory and storytelling to be definitive of the nature of time and community identity.

I may research Black scholarship on the penal system and how it conjures the specter of chattel slavery.

(Note: there is a strong possibility through initial stages of researching and writing that I switch tracks and explore the meaning and act of motherhood between Sethe and Leonie.)

For my final project, I am interested in animal imagery in Black literature, specifically, the use of the mule to describe Black women. I would use this topic as a starting point to talk about the sexualization, violence, and stereotyping specific to black women. 

I would refer back to Their Eyes Were Watching God, Venus, and The Color Purple and close-read certain parts of each text to help further understand the intersectionality between labor and sexual abuse, and how these are taught generationally. In addition to these, I would reference the use of animal imagery in Sing, Unburied, Sing and figure out how that may relate to Black history.

In terms of supplementary texts, I would use “African Americans, Mules, and the Southern Mindscape, 1850-1950” by George B. Ellenburg and “From Mules to Muliebrity: Speech and Silence in ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’” by Julie A Haurykiewicz to gain a deeper knowledge on the intricacies of the usage of the word.

I think this would most likely be in the form of a conference-style paper, and hopefully be able to research more of the modern use of animal imagery. If this does not pan out as I plan, then I would also be interested in writing about Black mental health and how this affects narration. 

I plan to explore Black women's role in as the head of the family. I want to put emphasis both the obvious and subtle jobs that these women have on their communities and families.

Three texts that I want to reference in my paper are Beloved by Toni Morrison, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Some supplementary work that I plan to reference are television shows from this century that depict modern day Black families. Rainbow from the sitcom Black-ish is a great example of what the modern day Black mother/head of household looks like.

As a right now, I plan to form these thoughts in a conference paper. I might also consider broadening my topic and discussing Black family dynamics as a whole.

I intend to do extensive research on how Octavia Butler's life experiences might have influenced the writing of Kindred, and map it using the StoryMaps platform. I would also like to explore how writing in "speculative fiction" allowed Butler to reach a broader audience and perhaps explain why this book was so successful.

The National Women's History Museum has some information about Butler's life (https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/octavia-estelle-butler#:~:text=Octavia%20Estelle%20Butler%20was%20born,a%20maid%20and%20her%20grandmother.), but I intend on finding more scholarly writings that discuss her history in California and compare it to the experiences of Dana, who is also a Black woman writer in California.

The StoryMaps tool will be especially useful as it offers a dynamic tool to illustrate these potential connections and potentially demonstrate how the use of fictional writing can provoke the nation to think critically about Black women through American history.

For my final project, I am interested in further exploring how black women are depicted in household roles in black literature. By researching this, I hope to begin a conversation on the intersectionality of gender/racial stereotypes and motherhood, and how these roles play out in black female literature.

By researching this idea, I hope to re-engage with texts like The Color Purple, A Raisin in the Sun, and Beloved. I think all three of these texts spend a significant amount of time dealing with motherhood in the home. Upon beginning my research, I would like to also investigate other texts and expand the scope of my work. I would like to research film as a potential medium for studying this intersectionality, and how written text is reflected on the screen.

I think it would be really engaging to do a digital exhibit. By using this as a form of presentation, I can include links to clips from films, as well as pages from some of the texts we have read in class.

The three texts I would like to explore are Ida B. Well's Crusade for Justice, report of the joint select committee to inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrection states, and Hannah Rosen Terror in the Heart of Freedom.

I imagine this as an essay that will explore the continued sexual exploitation of Black bodies during Jim Crow and the resistance to both that and gendered nature of citizenship.

For final assignment I wanted to focus on the themes of Black Motherhood, healing, and self-love through hair. I was inspired from Channon Miller’s talk “In Search of Hartford’s Black Maternal Garden” where she discussed “homeplace” as a place for Black liberation and survival. She talked about how it is a space that represents mothering-community based care as a means to confront anti-blackness. One of the examples she provided was a beauty parlor. It made me think about the long history of black hair, and how it has been used as a form of resistance to anti-blackness. 

Some of the texts that related hair to healing, motherhood and self-love that I wanted to use are: A Raisin in the Sun with Beneatha’s choice to cut her hair and wear it naturally; The Color Purple with Celie combing Shug’s hair; Their Eyes Were Watching God with Janie’s decision to uncover her hair.  

Some of the questions that would help develop my research: How has black hair served as a form of resistance to colonialism? How does caring for, and maintaining hair contribute to strengthening black motherhood or sisterhood?

I also wanted to explore questions related to black hair and continued discrimination through the 21st century: How has hair discrimination in a professional setting impacted black women? How has social media impacted accessibility to black hair care products?

For the presentation of my research, I would prefer to do a creative digital exhibit. 

I plan to further research the idea of black women identity in the times of slavery, and how it can be taken/lost. I also want to talk about the mindset and decisions that are made under these kind of hardships.

Three texts that I will potentially reference in my paper are "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs, and "Venus" by Suzan Lori Parks. I also plan on using articles I have found through JSTOR titled, "Introduction: Women, Slavery, and Historical Research" by Brenda E. Stevenson as well as "Mad Enough to Kill: Enslaved Women, Murder, and Southern Courts" by Wilma King. These both provide further background on decisions Black women had to face to find their sense of self.

As of now I plan on forming my idea and thoughts through a 7-10 page conference paper. I might do a timeline and Story Map of my findings but I have to do further digging to figure out which would be best for my topic.

I want to explore the role of spirituality in Black womanhood, especially Black motherhood, and its effects on self identity in contemporary literature. I want to understand how spirituality and religion affects the identity of Black women and to unpack the relationship between spirituality and Black feminism. 

Three texts that I want to use are Sing, Unburied, Sing, because of the role of spirituality and the living/unliving as well as family relationships and motherhood, The Color Purple, for its religious and feminist concepts, and Beloved, for the role of motherhood and the relationship between the living/unliving. Additionally, I have found some articles on JSTOR that connect, such as Patton and McClure's “Strength in the Spirit: A Qualitative Examination of African American College Women and the Role of Spirituality during College,” which uses a Black feminist framework to study how Black women navigate college life with spirituality. I found another article by Chaney called “The Character of Womanhood: How African American Women’s Perceptions of Womanhood Influence Marriage and Motherhood,” which uses a Black feminist framework to analyze how Black women perceive womanhood, and how this influences Black womanhood and motherhood.

Some questions I will use to guide my research are: How does spirituality affect self identity for Black women? How does the role of the living/nonliving affect spirituality, and therefore have an impact on Black motherhood? What is the relationship between spirituality and Black feminism?

For my presentation, I am leaning towards writing a conference style paper, but I want to further explore the idea of a digital exhibit because I also think that could be cool and I have never made one before.

As the final project approaches i'll like to look into hair as my the main topic of my research. I'll like to look into the symbolism behind hair in African American culture? What's the conflict/controversy about black hair? As well as where it's rooted from?

This became my topic of interest because of the article I read early this semester for the critical response of "Their Eyes Were Watching God." The article title is, "Why don't he Like My Hair?": Constructing African-American Standards of Beauty in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes were Watching God." Which is one of the articles I'll like to further study to address my potential research question.

Another source that I can use is Tik Tok and the news outlets. I've seen in multiple videos, where kids were told they can't play sports because of their hairstyle, the length of their hair and accessories(beads). As well as a boy getting suspended from school because he had locs inside of his head. This is a reoccurring issue within the black community; the policing of hair: when, where and how you should wear it.

https://daily.jstor.org/how-natural-black-hair-at-work-became-a-civil-rights-issue/

"How natural black hair at work became a civil rights issue"

I want to unpack the cultural identity of the African American woman as it pertains to its' shaping post Reconstruction. In specific, I want to explore the dynamic between Black women and men and the conformities + resistances that persisted as both groups of people attempt to find their space within the structure of white America. How, within the intraracial confines, white supremacy, misogynoir, and gendered violence permeated it's way through, working to dictate how African American women and men utilize their ever dithering relationship with freedom.

The text I will be using as reference towards this phenomenon are Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes were Watching God. I might possibly use August Wilson's Fences as well. I chose these texts because they take place and span across key eras in the 20th century, in which they hold space to interrogate the notions and realities of being a man or a women, with a critical emphasis in the African American community. To supplement these text, I will reference Saidya Hartman's Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self Making in the 19th Century, Barbara Welter's The Cult of True Womanhood, and some of my own research pinpointed on the dynamic between African American women and men in respect to the shaping of the self - across generations.

The project will be presented via a 7-10 page conference styled paper led by the examples/relationships in the book and historically contextualized by the supplementary text.

I hope to use the texts Venus and their eyes were watching god (I am also open to other suggestions of texts we've read in class to use). Additionally, I will use the texts Black marriage through the prism of gender and race (http://www.jstor.com/stable/24572942), Unholy Matrimony: Marriage And Identity In Twentieth Century African-American Women's Fiction (http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-2595), the coupling convention: sex ,text, and tradition in Black womens fiction (https://www.jstor.org/stable/468086).

I think the books we have read in class in conjunction with these outside texts I have found in my initial search provide an in-depth understanding of the complex dynamics and legacies attached to marriage, the quest for love, and the abusive or unrequited nature of true love for female characters depicted in black women's writing

I think that this would best be presented in the form of a 7-10 page paper which I will most likely do but I still want to meet with people from the library to throw around ideas of a more creative way to digitally do this project.

Throughout class we have read numerous books on slavery and how black women have showed resilience during the oppression they faced. Through the works of Toni Morrison, Harriet Jacobs, and Suzan Lori Parks we are shown stories of black women making tough and grueling decisions in the face of racism and slavery. The main argument for my essay will be the theme of resilience and how that played a part in the stories we read in class as well as other secondary sources that I will be listing below. I also want to relate this theme back to today and as you mentioned in the "final paper instructions" the "#SayHerName" movement. I will be discussing the centering of black women's voices and how this focuses on the experiences and voices of black women, which acknowledges their unique struggles and the issues of racism and sexism in their lives. This focus on the experiences of black women reflects a sense of historical resilience and the need to address their specific challenges. I also want to touch upon not just the resilience black women showed but the way they found their own voices through it. The #SayHerName movement gives these women a voice, and thinking historical black women gave each other a voice/they knew what they needed to do in order to survive.

Annotated Bibliography:

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Random House UK, 2023.

Beloved is a great story written by Toni Morrison that shows that evolution of the protagonist Sethe and how each experience and man in her life makes her make tough decisions, and find her voice through the oppression and hardships she faces. This will be necessary to add in my argument on the idea of resilience.

Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the life of a slave girl. United States: G & D Media, 2020.

This next piece of work by Harriet Jacobs explains the life of Linda who was born into slavery and goes through the hardships of being a young black women and being owned by a master. As her life evolves she too is forced to make hard decisions to fight for her family as well as stick up for her self and survive. This text will also play a key role in the argument go black women and finding their voice/showing resilience.

Parks, Suzan-Lori. Venus: A play. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2015.

This last piece of work that we read in class is a play by Suzan Lori-Parks, and discusses a women and her encounter with sex trafficking and although her rebalance could be considered controversial I want to add a piece of her into my argument.

Collier-Thomas, Bettye, and V. P. Franklin, eds. Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement. NYU Press, 2001. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qfhx4.

I will also be referencing certain pieces of this book by Bettye Collier-Thomas to connect the historical resilience of black women too the present day issues going on.

Stevenson, Brenda E. “Introduction: Women, Slavery, and Historical Research.” The Journal of African American History92, no. 1 (2007): 1–4. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20064149.

As I stated in in my previous proposal I found this secondary source and felt like it gave a good historical background of enslaved women and how they were perceived and treated during the time of slavery. This will help me make a better argument and help the reader understand how strong these women had to be to keep fighting after going through these terrible times.

King, Wilma. “‘Mad’ Enough to Kill: Enslaved Women, Murder, and Southern Courts.” The Journal of African American History 92, no. 1 (2007): 37–56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20064153.

This source gave a brief but interesting example of slave girls who killed their master because of the way they were treated. I am not sure if I will be using this source through my essay but Once I read deeper into it I want to see if it will strengthen my point of resilience.

I want to explore the idea of citizenship through the experiences of Black women in the late 19th century. At a time when the nation was supposed to be ridding the nation of the racial citizenship, with the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, citizenship was fully gendered. Only men held citizenship and thus the oppression of Black women was designed to continue even during Reconstruction. The primary sources I want to use that will examine these questions is Ida B. Wells Crusade for Justice and report of the joint select committee to inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrection states. The secondary sources are Kristen Foster’s “‘We Are Men!’: Frederick Douglass and the Fault Lines of Gendered Citizenship.” and Hannah Rosen Terror in the Heart of Freedom.

Wells Crusade for Justice is just a valuable source for understanding the problems that Black female political leaders faced during Jim Crow. Her insights into not just the racial issues of the time but the intersections of race and gender are what I really want to focus on during this project. The Report of the joint select committee to inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrection states this was a Congressional committee that investigated White supremacist actions throughout the former Confederacy. There are hundreds of pages from this report of witnesses detailing racialized violence. Kristen Foster’s “‘We Are Men!’: Frederick Douglass and the Fault Lines of Gendered Citizenship.” explores the gendered ideas that are behind citizenship in the 19th century through the eyes of Federick Douglass and other Black men’s fight for equality. As I have said before, the suffrage movement for Black men had much more support than the one for Black women, or White women, which in itself is an interesting historical moment that could yield a few paragraphs in this project. Hannah Rosen, Terror in the Heart of Freedom, writes about the sexual assualts women of color faced. Rosen persuasively argues that in this critical moment of Reconstruction, contests over the future meaning of race were often fought on the terrain of gender.Sexual violence--specifically, white-on-black rape--emerged as a critical arena in postemancipation struggles over African American citizenship.

I propose to use existing scholarship, specifically from chapters from Sami Schalk’s Bodyminds Reimagined. This book will be especially helpful in outlining how the theme of (dis)ability is used in Butler’s fictional books to help readers conceptualize various forms of identity and oppression. Schalk’s book will also be a useful tool in helping me better understand Butler’s neo-slave narrative in relation to the legacy of slavery and racial violence. To better understand some of the ideas that Schalk discusses, I will read both of Butler's Parable books.

Additionally, I plan to reference Sarah Wood’s “Exorcizing the Past: The Slave Narrative as Historical Fantasy”. This short article describes how Butler was able to challenge preconceived ideas of White and Black femininity and how it was being represented in US society in the 1970s. Further, this article details how Butler was able to use fiction to intervene on Black representation in historical narratives regarding racial dynamics both during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Lastly, I would like to explore how alternative depictions of Kindred contribute to the original text and how they continue to uphold the themes and messages that Butler wanted to convey. There is an original Hulu TV series and a graphic novel that both tell the story of Dana. These forms of storytelling are especially important to analyze as they make Kindred much more accessible and do a great job of helping the reader/audience visualize these graphic scenes.

I am meeting with Dr. Mahoney next week to discuss this topic in greater detail and brainstorm how I might be able to contribute to Kindred’s growing popularity in making the text and themes more accessible online.

Butler, Octavia E. Kindred. Beacon Press. 2003.

Schalk, Sami. Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women's Speculative Fiction. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

Wood, Sarah. “Exorcizing the Past: The Slave Narrative as Historical Fantasy.” Feminist Review, no. 85 (2007): 83–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30140907.

A few  sources that’s has helped me further answer my questions would have to be Octavia Butler’s Binti, CNN article in relation to a Tik Tok  and “Why don't he Like My Hair?": Constructing African-American Standards of Beauty in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes were Watching God.”

Butler’s  Binti addresses the relationship and symbolism of hair from an afro-futuristic perspective. In Binti Butler uses hair in the trilogy to explore hair in connection to identity and African culture. I feel as this helps answers my question because it looks into African American hair through it’s power/symbolism in connection to African  culture and against western ideologies. In this trilogy you’re able to identify what tribe she is by her hair, adaptation/connection on a larger stand point. 

The Tik Tok and CNN article: “Texas student suspended for length of his locs hairstyle referred to alternative school,” is used to target the conflict behind hair in a western dominated society.  This story addresses how a teenager has been suspended back to back due to his hair style, outside suspension causing him to miss out on his education. This child doesn’t have any behavioral records and a model scholar but noted inside of  the Tik Tok they’ve taken measures to go with the school regulations by styling  his hair he was still kicked out. Showing that even with the adaptation of our (black) hair, it’ll never be fit to the standards of western society. Shows a control over body, since he doesn’t conform the student has been suspended and suggested to go to an alternative school In response to his hair; as well as the disregarding  of the Crown Act . Another thing to note from the video used is that a white student was also seen to be walking around the school with “locs” yet the black student Darryl George is being punished . 

“Why don't he Like My Hair?": Constructing African-American Standards of Beauty in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes were Watching God.”: 

This article addresses the controversy over black women hair. How their natural hair is rejected and favored to convert it to fit into the European style of beauty. Straightened hair, Jheri curls and perms, this is allow in the efforts to fit into the liking of a man (a black man) and society(What's deemed to be appropriate and professional). From the narratives that the author chooses to refer to Janie's hair inside of the "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and the "Song of Solomon"by Toni Morrison. It turns the narrative of hair being represented as strength , freedom and empowerment.  This article answers both questions as to the the symbolism of black hair identified in the female characters addresses in the study. In the book “Their eyes were Watching God,” hair stood to represent strength, freedom and empowerment in comparison to the usage of hair in Binti that addressed hair as symbolizing culture history, identity and  larger connection to those of the “unknown.”

 Annotation of two sources:

Johnson, Kecia R., and Karyn Loscocco. “Black Marriage Through the Prism of Gender, Race, and Class.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 46, no. 2, 2015, pp. 142–71. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24572942. Accessed 7 Nov. 2023.

This text provides a in-depth analysis of the ways which the intersectionality of gender and race create a unique experience and challenge within marriage for Black women. This text provides me insights into some of the dynamics in the marriage space; for example, the way in which the texts claims that Black women are burdened with the responsibility of raising up/supporting Black men at their own expense, which speaks to one aspect of the oppression depicted within Black marriage that I wish to examine. This text also speaks to the notion of a white marriage model and differences between marriage for White women vs. Black women; this provides an interesting framework for me to implement within my paper in which I can discuss the ways in which the legacies of slavery and the cultural notion of marriage inform the marital expectations/experience for Black Women.

McCray, A. L. Unholy Matrimony: Marriage And Identity In Twentieth Century African-American Women's Fiction. no date. Florida State University, 2011.

This text aims to illustrate the way in which the depictions of marriage in Black women’s literature has evolved over time. This text provides me with four more works by Black women writers that engage with the ideas of sexual repression, marriage being desirable as a means of security/stability, and domestic violence that I wish to explore in my paper. This text also provides me with a historical framework that speaks to the ways in which the cultural memory of slavery creates a parallel in which marriage becomes a cite for the re-enslavement of Black women. Furthermore, this text provides me with new insights on my topic as well as strategies that I can use to develop/explain concepts in my paper via the lens of feminist and social/political frameworks utilized by the author.

Annotated Bibliography: 

Haurykiewicz, Julie A. “From Mules to Muliebrity: Speech and Silence in ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God.’” The Southern Literary Journal 29, no. 2 (1997): 45–60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20078182. 

While this text directly interacts with Their Eyes Were Watching God, I think this would be a perfect way to center the reader's focus on how I plan to interact with mule imagery before going into a more general approach. I would use this as more of a case study to show direct strategies writers use when using animal imagery to convey an underlying point. 

Ellenberg, George B. “African Americans, Mules, and the Southern Mindscape, 1850-1950.” Agricultural History, vol. 72, no. 2, 1998, pp. 381–98. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3744388. 

I would use this to begin my essay probably and would engage with it in a way that centers the general history of animal imagery as it relates to the Southern landscapes we are continuously put in through the readings in this course. This source sets up a historical context for the use of animal imagery and allows us to understand why in these settings Black writers may have found it essential to incorporate this strategy. 

In addition to these, I am planning on meeting with a library specialist within the next two weeks to help me access research that will further this topic.

Annotated Sources:

1. Patton, Lori D., and Michelle L. McClure. “Strength in the Spirit: A Qualitative Examination of African American College Women and the Role of Spirituality during College.” The Journal of Negro Education 78, no. 1 (2009): 42–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25608717.

   1. This article employs a Black feminist framework to study how Black women navigate college life using spirituality. The authors examine the experiences of 14 Black college women attending PWIs to study how Black women use spirituality in college. They do this to understand the impact of spirituality in helping them to combat the misunderstanding and misrepresentation they often face in college experiences.

2.  Chaney, Cassandra. “The Character of Womanhood: How African American Women’s Perceptions of Womanhood Influence Marriage and Motherhood.” Ethnicities 11, no. 4 (2011): 512–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23890712.

   1. This article approaches how Black women perceive womanhood, and how this shapes their perceptions of marriage and motherhood. It takes on a Black feminist approach to examine Black women’s perceptions of womanhood based on family structure and experiences that are characteristically different from European or white notions that shape the perception of womanhood for white women. Additionally, Chaney suggests that a modified version of womanhood has been created by Black women based on their education, social class, and economic position in relation to Black men.

The show Black-ish is an example of a modern and progressive Black family. My analysis of this show would help conceptualize the impacts of the roles of Black women in earlier decades and how those roles resulted in certain stereotypes and roles today. In order to properly unpack these roles, both past and present, I must first research the experiences that Black mother encountered over time. There must be an explanation for why Black mothers take on certain roles now. A source that I think will give me the proper tools to analyze Black motherhood comes from the Michigan Law Review. In an article titled, “Unshackling Black Motherhood,” Dorothy E. Roberts reveals the ways that Black mothers were criminalized, especially for their prenatal care. This prompts questions about the kinds of resources that poorer Black mothers lacked and why they were not provided with the proper tools to grow healthy babies and healthy families. This article will help determine the role of the government had on Black mothers and families. Similarly, Jennifer Nash’s article called, “The Political Life of Black Motherhood,” will serve as a significant source to clarify how nonblack people affected the lives of Black women.  

In my meeting with the school librarian, I hope to find materials that surround how Black women and mothers are portrayed in the media and the impact that these mediums have on Black communities today. I would also like to find resources regarding the accuracy of the earlier forms of media.  

Dorothy E. Roberts. “Unshackling Black Motherhood.” Michigan Law Review, vol. 95, no. 4, 1997, pp. 938–64. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1290050.  

Nash, Jennifer C. “The Political Life of Black Motherhood.” Feminist Studies, vol. 44, no. 3, 2018, pp. 699–712. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.15767/feministstudies.44.3.0699.  

To provide context for my research, I will analyze the relationship between the Black men and women in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes are Watching God and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun as many of the contentions and battling for establishment of self is present throughout many of the characters in these text. In analyzing these respective texts, I will note to their specific historical dispositions to further map out the trajectory of this every dithering struggle for identity. I will  In addition to that, I will also include August Wilson’s Fences to compare the portrayal of these role from the perspective of a Black Male author. 

To supplement my text I will use the articles 

Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self Making in the 19th Century by Sadiya Hartman as this text peers into the ways slavery shaped the identity of Black folks on an individual and communal level. By going back pre-reconsturcution, I plan on noting to the ways Black people have relied on “self making” - a central theme in the article- to maintain their humanity in spite of the brutal systems they had to endure. I plan on comparing those ways with the contemporary avenues of self making Black people had to create when enslavement was no longer the norm. I plan to bridge together the idea of the construction of Blackness and Black womanhood across these two points of references.

I will also use Barbara Walter’s The Cult of Womanhood in order to further elaborate the idea of the construction of womanhood, how it’s differs from an intersectional lens, and the place it has when within the relation of men and women. I want to use it to set a basis of what the historical notion and creation of what a women has been considered and how post reconstruction, Mano of the norms are reinforced in order for Black women to submit to that ideal, despite it never considering Black women in it’s theory in the first place.  The key element were: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesiticity - elements that Black women fulfilled even while enslaved yet were not granted full womanhood.

I plan on meeting with the librarian in order to find text that specifically note to the shift in Black men and women post reconstruction and how their identity were were molded from the ground up.

In my piece, I am discussing what I refer to as ‘The BBL Phenomenon.’ Which is essentially the monetization and capitalization of the Black female body, as seen in Venus by Suzan Lori-Parks. I also plan on putting the piece in conversation with “Slave and Mistress: Ideologies of Womanhood Under Slavery” by Hazel Carby as well as either “Seduction and the Ruses of Power,” Scenes of Seduction or Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. I additionally want to incorporate interviews with contemporary black female pop culture stars, and weave in their opinion on body modification. (Nicki Minaj, Jayda Wayda, etc.)

 I am not sure as to which would be more prudent to include at the moment but I am open to either. I am leaning towards a wordpress site or possibly a magazine. In which I would be able to firstly share the historical background, calling upon texts I previously mentioned. I would then create a timeline of large scale of  black female monetization leading until the present day in which I would switch formats. 

I would then present these modern day examples in a grandiose way, in aims to address the way in which I believe some aspects of pop culture can serve as modern day slave auction pedestals. 

I am not quite sure how this will all look in the end, I am hoping that once I settle on a digital platform that I will be able to make a more accurate game plan of what the final result will look like.

An example of one of the pieces I wanna weave in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNQB4ra69tc

Jayda Cheaves On Business, Why She Wont Date Another Rapper After Lil Baby & discouraging Butt Shots

General Premise:

Ngandu-Kalenga Greensword, S. (2022). Historicizing black hair politics: A framework for contextualizing race politics. Sociology Compass, 16(8), e13015. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.13015

I will use this article to highlight the role of racial politics in the portrayal of black hair, as well as, analyzing the historical roots of hair discrimination. This will help me provide the context to black hair discrimination, which is what healing and self-love through hair care is combating.

“PsychoHairapy: A Ritual of Healing Through Hair.” PsychCentral. Accessed November 5, 2023. https://psychcentral.com/health/psychohairapy-a-ritual-of-healing-through-hair#The-current-crisis.

This article discusses psychohairapy, as a form of therapy to combat the large rates of depression amongst black women. This article discusses “Psychohairapy” as a more clinical term to discuss a form of self-care and therapy that has always been practiced among black women. I will use it to contextualize how hair related themes in the three texts I selected are forms of self-love, motherhood, and healing.

I want to explore the idea of debt in Black American literature. Debt as I see it is essentially trauma from the pasta.  I want to systematically explore debt. Debt can be split into two. One is debt which is concerned with the spiritual consequences of slavery. In Beloved, Morrison deals with debt through rememory, and magical realism i.e. the house and the ghost. The other type of debt is the debt that is economic, and that arises from centuries of slavery, exploitation, segregation, miscegenation, discrimination and racism. This is mainly explored through the WAKE, the modern state experience of the socio-economic lives of Black Americans. I want to first individually explore the two types of debt and later on, show how they combine. Then show how they both make up a significant portion of the Black American experience and how the black literary tradition we have covered in class explores both. I have attached the main secondary source I will be using to define and support my idea of debt. I will later add other secondary sources that further support my claims.

Page 1: Introduction (to be reworked)

In my piece, I will address the implications that the monetization and fetishization of black women has led to an influx of plastic surgery amongst those in popular culture and still there is profit off of the “black butt” (In regards to Sarah Bartmaan, Nicki Minaj, Kylie Jenner). 

Page 2: The Beginning (history)

Sarah Bartmaan/Hottentot Venus

• The "Batty" Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body

• Summary

  • "The 'Batty' Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body," discusses the self-representation of black women and how it negotiates the gaze of the viewers, taking into account the historical meanings inscribed on their bodies. The author, Williams, aims to suggest to the viewer that historical precedents still hold resonance and power in the way contemporary images of African American women are read and responded to. She frames her body in gold, using gilt frames as a gesture toward aesthetic appreciation and a project of seeing each other as black female subjects. The piece also explores the struggle to redefine historic images, which requires black women to resist the defensive "policing" of each other's bodies and sexualities, dating back to the era of black "club women" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article discusses how black middle-class women located themselves within the boundaries of respectability and the tensions that arose when they failed to adhere to certain behaviors, such as the presentation of their "too large behinds.”

• Disabling Bodies

  • In the section on disabling bodies, Janell Hobson discusses the racialized sense of aesthetics that positions blackness in terms of grotesquery while whiteness serves as an emblem of beauty. She references Immanuel Kant's definition of beauty and Noel Carroll's concept of nonbeauty or ugliness as the ultimate in imperfection, which can be used to endorse or demean the moral credentials of an ethnic or racial group. Hobson also explores how the grotesque figure, identified by Carroll, is recognized as carnivalesque by Mikhail Bakhtin, subverting social hierarchies and normalcy. Rosemarie Garland Thomson reinterprets this carnivalesque body as a disabled body, presenting the ultimate challenge to perfection and progress. She pairs female bodies and disabled bodies within a feminist disability theory, recognizing how these bodies are similarly cast as deviant and inferior. Hobson argues that these discourses perpetuate black women's "outsider" and "disabled" status, providing further justification for their devaluation and discrimination. She also discusses how black women's representational history is one of "unmirroring," constantly grating against the distorted images of the dominant culture. Hobson emphasizes the need for a black feminist aesthetic to challenge the dominant culture's discourse of the black body as grotesque and articulate a black liberation discourse on the black body beautiful

• Hottentot Venus

  • The section on the Hottentot Venus discusses the historical and cultural significance of Saartjie Baartman, a South African woman who was exhibited in 19th-century Europe due to her steatopygia, or the enlargement of the buttocks. Baartman's exhibition symbolized the connections between grotesquerie, sexual deviance, and racial difference. She was put on display as a mythical and "strange"-shaped "Hottentot," framed by a history of colonial domination. Her buttocks, stigmatized in Europe as a condition of "steatopygia," served as an important symbol of racial difference in her exhibition. The section also explores the cultural and scientific dehumanization of Baartman, including the pseudoscientific studies of her anatomy and the popular culture representations of her body. The Hottentot Venus exhibition gave rise to numerous cartoons and advertisements, emphasizing the perceived "ugliness" and "freakishness" of Baartman's body. The section highlights the cultural misunderstandings and racial prejudices that constructed an ideology of racial "difference" and "superiority." It also discusses the sexualization and dehumanization of Baartman's body, as well as the role of science in shaping discourses on race and sexuality. The section provides a critical analysis of the historical representation of the Hottentot Venus and its impact on the perception of black female bodies in Western culture

Page 3: Modern Implications

• The "Batty" Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body

• Race, Gender, and Aesthetics

  • The section on race, gender, and aesthetics discusses the role of gender in reinforcing an ideology of racial difference within racist discourse. It explores how Baartman's body came to reinforce an ideology of racial difference and how gender played a key role in this reinforcement. The section highlights how Baartman's buttocks and genitalia shaped a view of deviant sexuality that could not have been represented if it were a "Hottentot" male exhibited in a similar fashion. It also discusses the historical and cultural tropes of rawness, lasciviousness, and "nastiness" associated with the black female rear end, as well as the different cultural contexts in which artists like Jean-Paul Goude and Robert Mapplethorpe operate. The section further examines the representation of black male and female bodies in art and popular culture, and how these representations reinforce stereotypes of black female sexuality as deviant and grotesque, while black male bodies are often fetishized or celebrated. The section also delves into the cultural distinctions in the celebration of black female sensuality and the stigmatization of black female bodies, as well as the different cultural contexts that inform the work of photographers and artists. It provides a critical analysis of the representation of black male and female bodies in art and popular culture, and how these representations perpetuate racial and gender stereotypes

• The Commodification of the Black Female Body

  • Summary

    • The paper explores how the commodification and objectification of African American women's bodies were used to uphold racial capitalism and white superiority. It delves into the works of scholars such as Marx, Du Bois, and Robinson to analyze the intersection of capitalism, racism, and gender oppression. The paper is divided into four sections, covering the origin of racial capitalism, the relationship between slavery and gender, the role of race in justifying the sexual abuse of Black females, and the historical development of racial capitalism. It provides a critical analysis of how the exploitation of African American women was integral to the development of capitalism and how their bodies were treated as commodities for economic gain.

  • The Term Fetish

    • Marx:

      • Marx uses the term "fetish" in the concept of commodity fetishism to describe the way in which commodities are perceived in society. He does not use the term in a derogatory manner, but rather draws upon its colonial origin to explain the relationship that money has with all other commodities. The term "fetish" was originally used to describe religious objects with magical powers, and Marx applied this idea to understand how the value in commodities and money hides the social and labor relations involved in their production and exchange. This concept of commodity fetishism is essential to understanding how the commodification and objectification of African American women's bodies were used to uphold racial capitalism and white superiority, as discussed in the provided document.

Page 5

Nicki Minaj:

• Her interactions with cosmetic surgery specifically her interview with Joe Budden

• A Conversation With Nicki Minaj & Joe Budden

  • 
    

Kylie Jenner or Kim Kardashian

• https://www.mic.com/life/the-sarah-baartman-effect-how-black-womens-bodies-are-still-both-exploited-revered-82504058

• How Kylie after the trends changed (sofia richie) moved away from that body type

  • Potentially insert tiktoks

• The Butt Remix: Beauty, Pop Culture, Hip Hop, and the Commodification of the Black Booty

  • 
    

An example of one of the pieces I wanna weave in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNQB4ra69tc

For my project, I want to display an evolution of the portrayal of black domestic femininity. For this, I am going to select a play from the 1930s, 1990s, and the 2010s to compare and contrast with the two texts from the 1950s.

Annotated Bibliography:

1.) DOSSETT, KATE. “Garveyism, Communism, and Gender Trouble: Theodore Ward’s Big White Fog.” In Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal, 164–202. University of North Carolina Press, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469654447_dossett.9.

This is a great article that dives into the deeper messages of Big White Fog. Dossett discusses each of the three lead characters in great detail, outlining what they represent and how this matters in a government-funded drama written by a black man.

2.) SMITH, JUDITH E. “RERACIALIZING THE ORDINARY AMERICAN FAMILY: RAISIN IN THE SUN.” In Visions of Belonging: Family Stories, Popular Culture, and Postwar Democracy, 1940-1960, edited by ROBIN D. G. KELLEY and JANICE RADWAY, 281–328. Columbia University Press, 2004. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/smit12170.13.

Another really cool article about reracializing the characters of Raisin in the Sun. Smith revisits the praises of Hansberry's work to discuss whether or not the play would still be as meaningful without the blackness as some critics claimed it would be.