This study interrogates the trope of “tropical temptress” that dominated colonial print culture. Encoded in textual accounts reliant on this trope, it posits, is a subtextual fear Black female agency. To excavate and rehabilitate voices women have been both occluded co-opted by colonialist archive, recognises need to look beyond. It takes its cue from Danielle Skeehan, who seeks out traces insu...

Serena Dyer, Material Lives. Women Makers and Consumer Culture in the 18th Century. London New York: Bloomsbury Visual Art, 2020. 272 p. 103 color illus. ISBN: 9781350126961.In her compelling Lives, Dyer tackles an exceptional legacy: four ladies’ ingenious sartorial designs on which they worked for most of their lives. Dyer’s masterful analysis these material sources immerses reader world poli...

Social rank in human and nonhuman animals is signaled by a variety of behaviors and phenotypes. In this research, we examined whether a sartorial manipulation of social class would engender class-consistent behavior and physiology during dyadic interactions. Male participants donned clothing that signaled either upper-class (business-suit) or lower-class (sweatpants) rank prior to engaging in a...