https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8658-0266
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David Stefan Doddington, Thomas A. Foster. Rethinking Rufus: Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men., The American Historical Review, Volume 126, Issue 4, December 2021, Pages 1656–1657, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhab633
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In Rethinking Rufus: Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men, Thomas A. Foster provides a powerful history of how sexual violations shaped the experiences and identities of enslaved men, and reveals the traumatic consequences of this on enslaved community life. Foster’s emphasis on emotional and psychological abuse alongside physical exploitation allows us to better understand how sexuality infused all forms of dominance and control in American slavery.
Foster makes use of a wide range of source material to engage with the histories of sexual violation for enslaved men, as well as to consider moments of same-gender intimacy. Foster is always cognizant of the silences and dissemblance in the surviving material but insists we can, and must, read for evidence of men’s exploitation. With a critical rereading of the extant slave narratives, 1930s Works Progress Administration interviews, and court records, Foster offers incisive visual analysis to illuminate the concerns with, and control of, enslaved men’s sexuality. Nuanced assessments of abolitionist imagery, portraiture, engravings, sketches, and daguerreotypes are found throughout the text and allow for an expansive reading of violation. Indeed, Foster makes consistently adroit links between cultural objectification and the emotional, mental, and physical suffering of Black men in (and out of) slavery.
