Please join us for the 20th Annual Black Women's Conference honoring bell hooks

Finding Our Place: A Conference in Honor of the Work and Writings
of bell hooks

Schedule | Contact

20th Annual Black Women’s Conference: April 18-19, 2014
This year is the 20^th convening of the Annual Black Women’s Conference.  In its history, there are few subjects of interest and important to the lives of Black women the conference has not explored.  As we celebrate this important year of the conference, we turn our attention to the work of a native daughter of Kentucky and preeminent feminist and intellectual, bell hooks.  Over the course of her career, hooks has been a leading thinker on the complexity of the positions of black women in American society and politics.  hooks continues to challenge  us with her current work to be both creative and thoughtful about understanding and making our place. Join us in celebrating the work of this important scholar and two decades of gathering black women in community. - more info: https://aaas.as.uky.edu/black-womens-conference

Sara Baartman Connections

photo credit - http://triciagilson.tumblr.com/post/10145301936/the-story-of-sara-baartman-is-haunting-and

We are continuing our discussion about the influence of Sara Baartman on popular culture, inclusive of sociology, psychology, and family interactions.

Please identify one photo (electronic or print) of Sara Baartman and then identify three photos of Baartman-like women that were produced in the 20th/21st Century, 1900-Present.

You may want these photos to be reflective to your research project ideas. Be able to tell me why the photo has Baartman's connotations or likenesses. Be able to say why the photo is relevant to research. 

Please post links and explanations regarding the photos in the comments portion of this post. 

Mekhatansh K McGuire presents at NCUR 2014

“BAD GYALS”, “ONE MINUTE MEN” & SEXUAL SUPREMACY: WOMEN-RAPPERS BOTH APPROPRIATING & RESISTING SEXISM AND MISOGYNY WITHIN HIP HOP.

Mekhatansh K. McGuire, Jacqueline Couti, Gender & Women's Studies, University of Kentucky

Sat 9:00-9:20 The White Hall 205 - The University of Kentucky

Mekhatansh K. McGuire - African American and Africana Studies Minor, University of Kentucky

pic from http://hiphopandpunkfeminisms.weebly.com/speakers--performers.html

This oral presentation will be exploring how women rappers appropriate tenets of hegemonic masculinity centering around the necessity to possess a high sexual prowess to legitimize and solidify the desired dominant position within the male-centered framework of hip hop. By using the contemporary artist Shystie and the more classic artist Foxy Brown; I come to conclusions about themes of resistance, dominance, black feminism and racism within the lyrical content of each artist. This sexual domination has a layer that seeks power and supremacy through one’s sexual prowess exposing a superficial testament to the power of a vagina which can be seen as empowering or pro-woman with residue from cultural feminism. But if you look deeper , what is revealed is a belief that a woman’s power rests solely in the her sexual prowess because without her ability to please or attach herself to a man she has nothing in this society that is rooted in a white supremacist, racist, sexist, patriarchal framework. In examining each of these women, I will show the nuanced relationship that Black women have with problematic cultural fixtures as well as how they negotiate success within the specific hegemonic masculine framework of mainstream hip hop as a means of creating scholarship that is in direct conversation with the culture that creates the need for these problematic appropriation.

Sat 9:00-9:20 The White Hall 205 - The University of Kentucky