Paul Anthony Smith, Untitled, 7 Women, 2019. Unique picotage on inkjet print, coloured pencil, spray paint on museum board, 101.6 x 127 cm. The Hott Collection, New York
AAAS 88.22: Black Womanhood & The Meaning of Freedom
Dartmouth College, Winter 2024
Prof. Shelby Sinclair
Welcome to our course exhibit!
About the Course: Black Womanhood & the Meaning of Freedom examined the social traditions and political strategies that defined Black women’s lives in the western hemisphere between the 17th and early 20th centuries. This term we asked how women theorized, rehearsed, and enacted freedom. Harnessing critical scholarship across disciplines, the course offered a broad perspective on Black women’s subjectivity, theories of freedom, and their importance to the history of the modern world.
About the Exhibit: After participating in this interdisciplinary, reading-intensive, upper level seminar for nine weeks, the fourteen students enrolled in the course were invited to mine the archives. Through close study of the history of gender and race in the United States, Cuba, Barbados, Haiti, Antigua, Brazil, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic, students developed research questions to deepen their engagement with Black women’s lives beyond the chimera of the “female” subject-position. Their findings are presented here.
The exhibits in this series showcase the intellectual vitality, archival curosity, and investigative innovation that brought our seminar to life each week. Projects span more than 300 years of Atlantic world history and explore music, law, literature, psychology, social movements, popular culture, and more.
Thanks for visiting!
Questions aboout this exhibit? Contact Prof. Sinclair at shelby.sinclair@dartmouth.edu