Flesh Fields is a feminist (re-)editing project that probes the gendered dynamics of whitewashing and its literary associations in both art and art history. The first volume delves into five case studies of literary-historical BIPOC women who have been hyper-feminized, hyper-sexualized, and racially ‘purified’ in art and media history. In this volume, we analyze the racial apathy and color-blindness prevalent in—especially, early modern—fine art and literature, but equally the racial tensions which exist in the reception of such art and whitening phenomena. From mapping the disregarded Greco-Roman myths of Andromeda “from darkest Ethiopia” and her emergence as a blonde, white woman in the visual iconography of European Renaissance art, to questioning the age-old scholarly neglect of Black Madonna Africana or the ‘Brown Virgin Mary,’ Flesh Fields seeks to uncover dominant ideologies of ‘old’ and ‘new’ racism within past and present ocular cultures. 


This project was done in collaboration with Ayra Thomas, a graduate from McMaster University, who wrote all the essays, while I illustrated the women and designed the book.

Flesh Fields has been presented at the following conferences:

Situated Emergences Communication & Media Studies Graduate Symposium, Concordia University. September 20, 2024.

Dis/Connections SAGE-UW Graduate Symposium, University of Waterloo, October 5, 2024.


Andromeda’s essay was also reworked and developed further for the journal (Un)Disturbed: A Journal of Feminist Voices.