S3E4: Sara Baartman

The Remedial Herstory Podcast

In this episode, Kelsie interviews Dr. Pamela Scully, a professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Professor of African Studies at Emory University, Atlanta about Sara Baartman, the Hottentot Venus. Scully is the author of "Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography" from Princeton. She is Chair of the Committee on Gender Equity of the American Historical Association. Sara Baartman was displayed on the stages of Europe in the early nineteenth century. She was born in the Cape Colony. Her life was entwined with British colonialism and violence, the rise of freak shows, the rise of racial science and the legacies of racism for Black women around the globe. Her life also exemplified her complex navigation of oppression. Her life is a way into understanding the rise of particular ways of thinking about race and their entanglement with science as well as an example of colonialism and cosmopolitanism in places students might not expect. She was buried on South African's Women's Day and the return of her remains is also a story about the coming of democracy to South Africa after Apartheid. The court case she was involved in in London was used in one of the key trials in Guantanamo Bay in the 2000s.

Find Scully's co-authored book here https://www.amazon.com/Sara-Baartman-Hottentot-Venus-Biography/dp/0691147965

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