Text

theses

This dissertation examines racialized and gendered discourses of health for African-American adolescent girls and the production of ideal representations of the body during the early twentieth century. This project contributes to a growing field of Black Girlhood Studies by tracing histories of African-American girlhood, health and embodiment. During 1919-1940, informal and formal health education ushered in new practices and knowledges related to the black adolescent female body. Health education included a diverse set of pedagogical practices found in Young Women’s Christian Associations, historically black colleges and universities, advice literature, and newspaper columns. African-American girls were encouraged to shape and conduct their bodies and behaviors across four areas of hygiene: physical hygiene, personal hygiene, social hygiene, and mental hygiene. These forms of hygiene, which addressed physical culture and sport, beauty, sexuality, and character, shaped notions of the healthy and respectable African-American adolescent girl. Health also intersected with patterns of urbanization, consumerism, and migration, especially for girls in Northern cities in the United States. African-American girls negotiated guidance and surveillance within urban Northern cities as their bodies represented sources of anxiety and hope during the New Negro Era. Ideologies of racial uplift also permeated black health education, as girls were instructed to align their actions and bodily representations with the ideals of the black middle class. African-American girls were directed to display qualities of respectability and racialized femininity as they demonstrated their right to claim access to the category of American girlhood.

ETD_10985

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-xj0d-ye61

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.