SHIFTING SYMBOLS OF A BLACK FEMINIST IN MOTION RECLAIMING THE LAND/BODY/HISTORY OF HARRIET TUBMAN

Harriet Tubman (ca.1822-1913) is a celebrated figure in U.S. History, most renowned for her work on the Underground Railroad and the Union side of the U.S. Civil War. Indeed, her most powerful role took place in South Carolina when she became the first woman in U.S. history to lead a military raid on the Combahee River on June 2, 1863, which resulted in the liberation of more than 750 people from slavery. Tubman is the ultimate freedom fighter, and recently, her symbolism has been subject to various reclamation projects: from the planned redesigned $20 currency to the latest erected monuments across the nation, even to the ways that Tubman's Combahee River Raid leadership can be reclaimed from different groups diametrically opposed to each other (think of the radical socialist Black feminist Combahee River Collective and the CIA branch of the U.S. government). This lecture will explore the shifting historical symbol that is Harriet Tubman and her significance to body politics, space and place, and Black feminist potential in our present and future moments.

Janell Hobson is Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York. She is Editor of the acclaimed Ms. Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project and a regular contributing writer to Ms. Magazine. In addition, she is the author of three books, most recently When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination (2021). A third edition of her first book, Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture (2005, 2nd. ed. 2018) is forthcoming.