Content area
Abstract
Graduating in 2006 with a doctorate in sociology and anthropology fromHoward University, Dr. Rousseaus' scholarship centers on issues of structural and institutional sources of inequality, social rhetoric and identity formation, and, as is the case in Black Woman's Burden, the politics of coercion, commodification, and control over the reproductive and sexual lives of African American women. In Black Woman's Burden, the author walks readers through distinct reproductive policy periods: the agricultural era (1845-1865), industrial era (1929- 1954), and the eras of global and the electronic age. Part five, "Commodifying Black Reproduction," and six, "Liberation," focus on reifying the findings of her study and delineating the tools and techniques of commodification-the process of objectifying, controlling, and exploiting Black female labor for the purpose of maximizing economic profit or social power.