(Mia Lia with Dr. Mostov) 

Congratulations, Mia Lia and Sandra DeeringWinners of the 2007 Martha Montgomery Prize

(Shantala Surya with Hilary Clinton)

Shantala Surya attended the National NOW Conference & Young Feminist Summit

Poster received 2nd place in the division of Undergraduate Humanities at CoAS Research Day, 2007

57. Title: Exploring the Victorian obsession with sexuality and their attitudes about inferior race and gender

Authors: Shantala Surya and Thomas Hoffman

Faculty Advisor: Stacey Ake

Department: English and Philosophy

Keywords: Sara Baartman, Hottentot Venus, Georges Cuviers, Khoi Khoi, Napoleon’s surgeon

The authors address the colonial obsession with sex and gender through the exploration of the Sara Baartman case study.  She was a South African woman of the Khoi Khoi tribe with an unusual medical condition where her inner labia hung 4 inches outside the outer labia.  Sara was discovered when the Dutch invaded and pillaged the country, and brought to England .  There is controversy about whether she was captured and forced on board the ship, or whether she boarded of her own accord.  In England Sara was given the name Hottentot Venus and exhibited as an oversexed African to the Victorian audiences.  “Hottentot Venus was a derogatory name given with the intent to humiliate and denigrate her to society as a lesser human being and thus laugh at what the white Europeans saw as a freak.”  She was treated as a circus animal in Paris , until she died of unspecified illness related to prostitution activities. Georges Cuviers, the Parisian scientist claimed the body and “she was carved up by Napoleon's surgeon, who made a cast of her body, pickled her genitals and brain, and put her skeleton on display in a museum” for public scrutiny where they were displayed for 160 years”.  The authors develop the paper by exploring themes of gender, race and sexuality and conclude that the Victorian population indeed had an unnatural interest in any sexuality unlike their own.