Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction: Black Female Body Politics
Chapter 2: "What Free Could Possibly Mean": The Intimate Sphere in Enslaved Women's Visions of Freedom
Chapter 3: Racial Violence and the Post-Emancipation Struggle for Intimate Equality
Chapter 4: Intimate Injustice, Political Obligation and the Dark Ghetto
Chapter Five: Intimate Justice
Notes
Index

About the Author

Shatema Threadcraft is Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the American Association of University Women, the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, and the Rutgers Center for Race and Ethnicity.

Reviews

"With theoretical sophistication and admirable moral clarity, Intimate Justice reframes what corrective racial justice should entail by taking the deprivation of black women's intimate capacities as its starting point. Threadcraft makes a compelling case that the debate about racial justice has focused almost exclusively on the civic harms suffered by blacks in the public sphere, thereby overlooking the thwarting of black women's intimate capacities in
the private sphere. She brilliantly spells out what a fuller account of racial justice would entail."
--Juliet Hooker, Associate Professor of Government and African Diaspora Studies, University of Texas at Austin
"'Establishing meaningful intimate justice is every bit as important as economic and political justice.' Shatema Threadcraft's Intimate Justice powerfully demonstrates the wisdom of that claim and the urgency of developing a theory of freedom that locates the historical and contemporary experiences of African American women and girls at its center. This is a foundational text for all political theorists."
--Lawrie Balfour, author of Democracy's Reconstruction: Thinking Politically with W.E.B. Du Bois
"Threadcraft's Intimate Justice is remarkably confident, sophisticated, and engrossing. This fresh, ambitious work successfully brings feminist political theory together with Black feminist thought, richly exploring ways to think about and achieve justice within the sphere of intimate relations."
--Rickie Solinger, author of Reproductive Justice: What Everyone Needs to Know
"As a result of the legacy of the violation of Black women, Threadcraft suggests the creation of local, Black-female led offices that act as service centers for victims and also provide cultural and representational support for Black women. Such spaces could help change the meaning of Black womanhood by uplifting the art and creative contributions of Black women, allowing them to define themselves." - Melissa Brown, University of Maryland