Author: Janell Hobson

Janell Hobson is professor of women's, gender and sexuality studies at the University at Albany. She is the author of When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination. She is also the editor of Tubman 200: The Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project.

What a ‘Black Helen of Troy’ Reveals About Hollywood and Mythmaking

The conversations over a Black actor like Lupita Nyong’o portraying the iconic Helen of Troy, “the most beautiful woman in the world”, reveal a broader discomfort with depictions of dark-skinned Black beauty in Hollywood.

Whether Nolan intended to or not, Nyong’o’s dual roles reinforced the white feminine ideal, since her Helen does not threaten whiteness as the beauty status quo, nor does her Clytemnestra establish her as sufficiently feminine. 

Writer Karen Attiah argues we don’t need a Black Helen so much as we need more “Black mythologies. … “We don’t need Black Helens of Troy. We need more Wakanda women. We need more Women Kings. We need more Queens of Katwe. It is precisely in this moment of historical erasure and rejection of even the most nominal forms of Black inclusion that Black writers and thinkers, and especially Black women, should be focusing on building out the civilizational myths, histories, and heroines we already have.”

Imagine an epic movie about Amanirenas, the Kandake queen who prevented the conquest of the ancient kingdom of Kush from the powerful Roman army circa 25 B.C.E.

Or Queen Nzinga, who fought against the Portuguese seeking to enslave her people during the transatlantic slave trade era circa 1600s.

We can hardly visualize the kingdom of Haiti in existence between 1811 and 1820 during the era of Bridgerton, as historian Marlene Daut argues, let alone tell the story of its king and queen (instead of reclaiming the British Queen Charlotte as a Black royal). 

Imagine Lupita Nyong’o cast in any of these majestic roles.

And these roles need not be historical. Imagine the same actor reprising her role as the spy “war dog” Nakia from the Black Panther franchise in her own movie spin-off, traipsing James-Bond style around the world without the need to replace James Bond himself. 

If we must wait until 2028 to witness Nyong’o on our big screens again (when the third Black Panther film is scheduled), then this moment in The Odyssey is a misuse of her talents.

Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Reclaims the Diversity of the Ancient World

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey validates the culture through this quarter-billion-dollar Hollywood production—best seen and appreciated in movie theaters. So, why did some react to this latest retelling of The Odyssey as if the mere presence of a Black woman would delegitimize its place in history? And should we ignore them as out-of-touch fringe extremists? 

Before The Odyssey even reached theaters, Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy ignited predictable outrage from white supremacists and anti-“woke” commentators who claimed a Black actor had no place in one of Western civilization’s foundational myths. But as scholars of antiquity make clear, that backlash says far more about modern racial politics than it does about the ancient world itself.

Nolan’s sweeping adaptation arrives at a moment when the fight over history is also a fight over power. By embracing a multiracial cast, The Odyssey challenges centuries of whitewashing and reminds us that the ancient Mediterranean was far more diverse than many have been taught to believe.

The diversity of the ancient world is our collective heritage—not the exclusive property of those seeking to rewrite the past.

Black Women, Beauty Politics and the Power of Rage in ‘Is God Is’

In one of the film’s most surreal scenes, the twins at the center of Is God Is—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 their pain, suppress their anger and perform acceptability. Anaia’s scarred face and Racine’s consuming rage become mirrors of the same misogynoir that shapes Black women’s lives—whether through beauty standards, domestic violence or the demand to remain silent.

What makes Is God Is so striking is its refusal to look away from the “ugly.” Harris insists that Black women marked by violence, scars and fury still deserve visibility, complexity and even divinity.

The film embraces the “angry Black woman” and the “ugly” Black woman as figures worthy of space, power and humanity. In doing so, it expands the tradition of Black feminist filmmaking by asking viewers to confront the realities dominant culture would rather ignore—and to recognize the beauty, dignity and selfhood that exist beyond respectability.

A Public Syllabus on Feminist Resistance Across U.S. History: Books, Films, Archives and Tools to Rethink America’s Origins

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.

Making Disability Visible in History: A Conversation With Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

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 Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Disability in American Culture and Literature (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,” Ms.’ 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 we think of as disabilities are often an opportunity for resourcefulness.”

(This essay is part of the FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists series, marking the 250th anniversary of America by reclaiming the revolution through the women and gender-expansive people whose ideas, labor and resistance shaped U.S. democracy.)

America’s Founding Feminists: Rewriting America’s Origin Story

Two hundred and fifty years ago, a small group of men declared that “all men are created equal,” casting a vision of liberty that has shaped the American imagination ever since.

Yet even as they debated freedom in Philadelphia, women were writing, organizing, governing, resisting and insisting on their place within the nation taking form. Some, like Mary Katherine Goddard, literally set their names in print; others, like Phillis Wheatley, wrote themselves into intellectual existence against a backdrop of enslavement and doubt. Still others left their mark through acts of refusal and flight, choosing freedom when the republic would not grant it.

A new series, Founding Feminists—launching at the start of Women’s History Month—unfolds over two months, twice a week. On this semiquincentennial of the United States, Ms. turns to these “founding feminists” not as anachronistic heroines, but as architects of an unfinished democratic project. There is no nation without women at its core—no democracy without their labor, intellect, resistance and imagination.

From Haudenosaunee matrilineal governance, to Black women’s freedom-seeking acts, from revolutionary manifestos to quiet domestic rebellions, our Founding Feminists series reexamines the past to illuminate our present moment of backlash and possibility.

If the Declaration of Independence set forth a promise of equality, it was women—across race, class, sexuality and nationality—who pressed the nation to live up to it.

Two hundred and fifty years later, their questions remain ours: What does freedom truly mean, and who gets to claim it?

Who’s American? Whose America? Bad Bunny’s Radical Halftime Message

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Thirteen minutes is how long it lasted, and global superstar Bad Bunny—full name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio—more than delivered. Set against pulsating Afro-Latin rhythms and brimming with the energetic dancing bodies of Black, Brown and other multicolored peoples, the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show transformed this historic moment of the first all-Spanish musical spectacle into a cultural reset. Now counted among the most watched halftime performances—with close to 130 million views—the Super Bowl was rightfully renamed the “Benito Bowl.”

Bad Bunny’s performance came just one week after he made history as the first artist recording exclusively in Spanish to win the Grammy’s top honor for Album of the Year. It arrived, too, amid escalating violence tied to ICE enforcement and the policing and deportation of Brown and Black communities. At a moment when the U.S. president is railing against diversity, equity and inclusion—and circulating virulently racist content targeting his predecessor and the nation’s first Black president and first lady during Black History Month—the cultural resonance of this halftime show feels all the more potent.

Bad Bunny’s dynamic performance is an affirmation of the same communities currently terrorized by state-sanctioned violence. At rallies and marches, people play Bad Bunny. In moments of grief and passion, people play Bad Bunny. His refusal to be silenced, to be forgotten, is an inspiration of hope and resilience for social movements. His music is music of the revolution, which was spectacularly televised in the middle of a widely watched football game.  

Octavia Butler Saw This Coming

The Huntington Library, located in San Marino, Calif., launches a new exhibit, Stories from the Library: From Brontë to Butler, on Dec. 13, 2025. This collection is especially renowned for its extensive archive on the personal writings and stories pertaining to science fiction author Octavia Butler, who died too soon at age 58 in 2006 due to a fall outside her home. The prolific writer and MacArthur Grant recipient leaves behind several series of novels and other works of fiction.

Janell Hobson spoke with Black feminist scholar and Butler biographer Susana M. Morris, who relied on the vast archive available at Huntington for her latest book, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler, which came out earlier this year.

“With Octavia Butler, we get cautionary tales. We could have just listened to her.”

Through Art and Storytelling, Artist Harmonia Rosales’ First Book Brings African-Centered Myths to Life

When Harmonia Rosales first unveiled The Creation of God in 2017—a reimagining of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam with a Black woman as the divine—she didn’t just challenge art history; she remade it in her image. With her brush, Rosales flipped the script on Western depictions of power, beauty and divinity, centering Black womanhood and African spiritual traditions long erased from the canon.

Her new book, Chronicles of Ori, continues that reclamation through story. A lushly illustrated volume rooted in Yoruba mythology, the work brings to life the Orishas, divine figures of West African cosmology, and weaves them together with familiar names like Eve—both biblical and mitochondrial—into a mythology that claims space for the African diaspora beyond enslavement.

“I felt that we needed a mythology,” Rosales told Ms. “We needed something to connect to besides enslavement, because that’s what seems to be in the Western canon.”

With Chronicles of Ori, she offers that connection: a world where African gods are unmasked, women embody creation itself, and the sacred is painted in brown skin. Through her art and her words, Rosales restores what history fragmented—melding spirituality, storytelling and imagination into what she calls a new kind of mythology, one that reclaims both memory and power.