Imagining, Writing, (Re)Reading the Black Body (30 Years of Democracy in South Africa)

This book is an outgrowth of an international conference – The Black Body: Imagining, Writing, and Re(Reading) – held at DePaul University, Chicago in 2004. The various contributing authors critically examine the changing discourses on the black body to address how it has been constituted as a site for construction and maintenance of social and political power. Drawing examples from Europe, Africa, the United States as well as other places in the Black Diaspora, the subject matter in this book discusses the raced, gendered, classed and culturally produced discourses about the black body. Through its examination of these and related issues, this book contributes to a dialogue across various disciplines about the black body, its meanings and negotiations as read, interpreted, and imagined in different frames of perception and imagination.

Print editions not for sale in Sub-Saharan Africa. This book is part of Routledge’s co-published series 30 Years of Democracy in South Africa, in collaboration with UNISA Press, which reflects on the past years of a democratic South Africa and assesses the future opportunities and challenges.

Sandra Jackson is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Director of the Center for Black Diaspora at DePaul University, Chicago. Her published works include the following co-edited books: Talking Back and Acting Out: Women Negotiating the Media across Cultures (2002); I’ve Got a Story to Tell: Identity and Place in the Academy (1999) and Beyond Comfort Zones: Confronting the Politics of Privilege as Educators (1995). She is a founding co-editor of African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal (Routledge, Taylor & Francis). She is currently working on a book of essays on race, gender and power in the academy as well as a book on the ways in which black women negotiate a habitable space in the academy.

Fassil Demissie is Associate Professor in Public Policy Studies, DePaul University, Chicago. He is a co-editor and contributor of the book, The New Chicago (2006) and editor of Postcolonial Cities (Routledge, Taylor & Francis). He is a founding co-editor of African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal (Routledge, Taylor & Francis) and Series Editor of Routledge Studies on African and Black Diaspora. His work has also appeared in Housing Studies, International Journal of African Historical Studies, African Identities, Social Identities and Urban Studies.

Michele Goodwin is the Everett Fraser Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. She is also Professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical Law School. She is the author of Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts (2005) and a host of law review articles and book chapters.