From Color Study to Video Vixen: The Changing Image of Black Womanhood in the Yugoslav Region

• In Event: Critical Approaches to Forgotten, Overlooked, and Ignored Histories

Abstract

Ideas of the Black female as oversexualized Other and subhuman emerged as early as the 14th century, and a number of Black female scholars, including Patricia Hill Collins and Robin Mitchell, have traced the distorted images and representations of Black womanhood. A great deal has been written about how these images of Black women have their roots in enslavement, but how can we understand the image of Black women in contexts unmarked by colonial histories, such as Southeast Europe? Acknowledging different geographic, temporal, and historical settings, I illustrate how images and representations of Black womanhood in various media, including film, literature, and portraiture, have circulated in the Yugoslav region sometimes in concert with, and other times in opposition to, the dominant Western imaginary of Blackness and Black womanhood. Covering 19th century portraiture, 20th century images of socialist solidarity, and 21st century representation in literature and media, I analyze historical images of the Black female body with the goal of reincorporating this narrative into the ways that an imaginary of Blackness, and specifically Black womanhood, has circulated in the Yugoslav region.

Author

• Sunnie Trine'e Rucker-Chang, Ohio State U