Janell Hobson

In new book The Conjuring of America, professor Lindsey Stewart explores how Black women used magic, medicine and traditions in American culture.

A viral American Eagle ad pits Sydney Sweeney against Beyonce, revives eugenicist undertones and reignites questions about beauty in America.

Black Feminist in Public: Author of Freeing Black Girls and Loving Black Boys Tamura Lomax in Revolutionary Mothering During Troubled Times

Through Art and Storytelling, Artist Harmonia Rosales' First Book "Chronicles of Ori" Brings African-Centered Myths to Life

This year’s top feminist pop culture moments show artists, storytellers and creators faced regressive politics with imagination, joy and anger.

On America’s 250th anniversary, Ms.' Founding Feminists centers the women whose words, labor and resistance built—and keep rebuilding—democracy.

Dr. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is a pioneering scholar of bioethics, humanities, disability justice and culture, and professor emerita at Emory University. Widely considered the founder of feminist disability studies, Garland-Thomson is the author of several canonical works, including <em>Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Disability in American Culture and Literature</em> (1997) and the influential essay, “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory” (2002). On the nation’s 250th anniversary and for the series on “America’s Founding Feminists,” <em>Ms.</em>’ guest editor Janell Hobson spoke with Garland-Thomson about disability history and its connections to women’s history. She argues centering disability reshapes our understanding of history, citizenship and whose lives are recognized as foundational to U.S. democracy. "Women's bodies have always offered men an opportunity to talk about nations, to talk about themselves, to talk about government." "... These human variations that w

This curated public multimedia syllabus spans the Revolutionary era and the long afterlife of feminist resistance—from the 19th century to the present. It includes works by series authors, books and articles, podcasts, films and television, primary-source collections, a Google Map of sites across the U.S. relevant to women’s histories, and a Spotify playlist tracing the legacy of protest music. Many of these works center marginalized communities and are organized under the themes of Revolution, Resistance and Reclamation.

In one of the film’s most surreal scenes, the twins at the center of <em>Is God Is</em>—Racine, “the Rough One,” and Anaia, “the Quiet One”—pretend to be strippers for a room full of men. But while Racine is welcomed, Anaia is rejected because her scarred face disrupts the men’s fantasies. That moment crystallizes one of the film’s central questions: What happens when Black women refuse to shrink themselves for the comfort of others? In Aleshea Harris’ Gothic revenge thriller, ugliness becomes both a burden and a source of power, as the film transforms into a stereotype-busting meditation on misogynoir, beauty politics and righteous rage. As the twins travel cross-country seeking vengeance against the father who burned their mother alive, Harris layers the conventions of the revenge genre with distinctly Black feminist aesthetics. The film moves between absurd comedy, trap music, intimate sisterhood and brutal violence while interrogating the ways Black women are expected to manage t

Christopher Nolan’s diverse cast in The Odyssey is applaudable, but conservatives suggest a discomfort with a dark-skinned Helen of Troy.