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Representative Women: Slavery, Citizenship, and Feminist Theory in Du Bois's “Damnation of Women”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Lawrie Balfour
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Abstract

In this essay, I contend that feminist theories of citizenship in the U.S. context must go beyond simply acknowledging the importance of race and grapple explicitly with the legacies of slavery. To sketch this case, I draw upon W.E.B. Du Bois's “The Damnation of Women,” which explores the significance for all Americans of African American women's sexual, economic, and political lives under slavery and in its aftermath.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , Summer 2005 , pp. 127 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by Hypatia, Inc.

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