Submitted by: Crystal Endsley, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Africana Studies, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
To view online: The Life and Times of Sara Baartman “The Hottentot Venus”
“A documentary film of the life a Khoikhoi woman who was taken from South Africa in 1810 and exhibited as a freak across Britain. The image and ideas for “The Hottentot Venus” (particularly the interest in her sexual anatomy) swept through British popular culture. A court battle waged by abolitionists to free her from her exhibitors failed. In 1814, a year before her death, she was taken to France and became the object of scientific research that formed the bedrock of European ideas about black female sexuality.”