I Am the Utterance of My Name: Black Victorian Feminist Discourse and Intellectual Enterprise at the

This work traces the genesis and evolution of African American women's feminist discourse and intellectual enterprise from slavery to the end of the 19th century. It does so in three ways. First, Dr. Tsenes-Hills almost solely utilizes the primary and secondary sources of 19th century African American women in order to locate and excavate the truly fascinating and extraordinary world of the 19th century Black woman. Second, the exterior, interior and alternative realities that delineated the African American experience-the Black woman's experience in particular-in 19th century America. Third, Dr. Tsenes-Hills identifies and examines the palpable presence of African American women at the Columbian Exposition (1893) as one of the earliest, and most public, instance of a distinct and unique Black feminist discourse and intellectual enterprise. The end result is an innovative and in-depth examination of the unique, complex, and contradictory inner-workings of a largely unexplored sub-group of American and African American History-Black Victorian Feminists.