The History of Black Women: Biologists' Accounts of Race and Gender

福斯托-斯特林博士正在研究社会差异的意识形态与生物学知识发展之间的交集。作为一项更大规模研究的一部分，她认为，许多当代生物学知识和理论都暗地里带有与性别和种族有关的文化价值观，无论是过去的还是现在的。她正在研究社会和智力力量之间的相互作用以及科学思想的发展。这项研究的每个部分都探讨了生物思维的社会性质，而对19世纪以来的解剖文献的考察和解释是这项工作的基石。从乔治·库维尔对南非有色人种女性莎拉·巴特曼身体的详细研究开始，一直持续到1870年的S，生物学家发表了对有色人种女性解剖的科学描述。根据这笔赠款，Fausto-Sterling博士正在完成对来自欧洲的解剖文献的汇编和检查。她还将这项研究扩展到来自美国的文学。她正在搜索美国的生物文献，寻找关于黑人女性身体的描述的平行例子。这些例子既扩大了她的证据基础，也使她的证据基础多样化。她还正在完成对越来越多的二手资料来源的审查，这些资料为放置和解释这一项目的结果提供了历史和理论背景。然后，她将能够解释她对19世纪生物学家及其科学著作的调查结果，以创造与欧洲男性假设标准不同的叙事。她假设，关于有色人种的叙述帮助创造了图标：身体部位在性别和变态的性行为方面获得了象征意义。这些源自对黑人女性身体的描述的图标变得流动起来，从19世纪最后四分之一开始出现，一直持续到20世纪，出现在对离经叛道的白人女性的科学描述中。在阐述和记录她的主张时，福斯托-斯特林博士正在从对生物文献的基本字面解读转向对其重要性的社会和文化描述。

Dr. Fausto-Sterling is examining the intersection between the ideologies of social difference and the development of biological knowledge. As a part of a larger study, she argues that much of contemporary biological knowledge and theory is covertly marked by cultural values, both past and present, concerning gender and race. She is examining the mutual interactions between social and intellectual forces and the development of scientific thought. Each part of this study probes the social nature of biological ideation with the examination and explication of the dissection literature drawn from the 19th century being a cornerstone piece for this undertaking. Starting with Georges Cuvier's detailed examination of the body of Sarah Bartman, a South African woman of color, and continuing into the 1870's, biologists published scientific accounts of dissections of women of color. Under this grant, Dr. Fausto-Sterling is completing the compilation and examination of that dissection literature emanating from Europe. She is also extending this study to literature emanating from the United States. She is searching the biological literature of the United States for parallel examples of accounts of the bodies of black women. The examples found both expand and diversify her evidentiary base. She is also completing the review of a growing body of secondary sources which provide both historical and theoretical background for placing and interpreting the results of this project. She will then be in a position to interpret her findings from her investigation of 19th century biologists and their scientific writings to create narratives of difference from the presumed norm of the European male. She hypothesizes that the narratives concerning people of color helped to create icons: body parts gained symbolical significance with regard to gender and deviant sexuality. Such icons derived from accounts of black female bodies, became mobile, appearing form the last quarter of the 19th century, well into the 20th century in scientific accounts of deviant white women. In amplifying and documenting her claims, Dr. Fausto-Sterling is moving from an essentially literal reading of the biological literature to a social and cultural account of its significance.