Rethinking Rufus

Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Buy on Amazon Buy on BN.com Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app

1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date 01 May 2019 | Archive Date 02 Aug 2019

Talking about this book? Use #RethinkingRufus #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!


Description

Rethinking Rufus is the first book-length study of sexual violence against enslaved men. Scholars have extensively documented the widespread sexual exploitation and abuse suffered by enslaved women, with comparatively little attention paid to the stories of men. However, a careful reading of extant sources reveals that sexual assault of enslaved men also occurred systematically and in a wide variety of forms, including physical assault, sexual coercion, and other intimate violations.

To tell the story of men such as Rufus—who was coerced into a sexual union with an enslaved woman, Rose, whose resistance of this union is widely celebrated—historian Thomas A. Foster interrogates a range of sources on slavery: early American newspapers, court records, enslavers’ journals, abolitionist literature, the testimony of formerly enslaved people collected in autobiographies and in interviews, and various forms of artistic representation. Foster’s sustained examination of how black men were sexually violated by both white men and white women makes an important contribution to our understanding of masculinity, sexuality, the lived experience of enslaved men, and the general power dynamics fostered by the institution of slavery. Rethinking Rufus illuminates how the conditions of slavery gave rise to a variety of forms of sexual assault and exploitation that affected all members of the community.

Rethinking Rufus is the first book-length study of sexual violence against enslaved men. Scholars have extensively documented the widespread sexual exploitation and abuse suffered by enslaved women...


Advance Praise

"Foster's work is a monumental contribution to history, Africana studies, gender studies, and black male studies that forces us to ask not how but why generations of scholars did not account for, or theorize, the evidence of black male sexual victimization across the centuries despite many being well known."

  —Tommy J. Curry, author of The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood


"Rethinking Rufus is a game-changer. Thomas A. Foster takes an oft-cited historical source and helps us see it, and the history of gender and sexuality in slavery, with new eyes. Foster's sensitive and inventive interpretations of the history of the sexual abuse of enslaved men provides new ways to investigate and understand these difficult and important histories." 

—Leslie M. Harris, coeditor of Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas

"Foster's work is a monumental contribution to history, Africana studies, gender studies, and black male studies that forces us to ask not how but why generations of scholars did not account for, or...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780820355221
PRICE $22.95 (USD)
PAGES 192

Average rating from 1 member