White Queen

May French-Sheldon's improbable public career began with an expedition throughout East Africa in 1891. She led a large entourage dressed in a long, flowing white dress and blonde wig, with a sword and pistol strapped to her side. As the "first woman explorer of Africa," she claimed to have inspired both awe and trust in the Africans she encountered, and as her celebrity grew, she reinvented herself as a messenger of civilization and "racial uplift." Tracey Jean Boisseau's insightful reading of the "White Queen" exposes the intertwined connections between popular notions of American feminism, American national identity, and the reorientation of Euro-American imperialism at the turn of the century.

Tracey Jean Boisseau is currently an assistant professor of cultural and women's history in the Department of History at the University of Akron. She has published articles on May French-Sheldon in Signs and Gender and History and recently edited a new edition of Sultan to Sultan (first published in 1892 by May French-Sheldon).

List of Illustrations

xi

Acknowledgments

xiii

Introduction: A Tale of Imperial Feminism

1

(22)

Part I. First Woman Explorer of Africa: The 1891 Expedition

The Caravan Trek to Kilimanjaro

23

(19)

Self-Discovery

42

(20)

Forging a Feminine Colonial Method

62

(20)

Sex and the Sultans

82

(15)

Confessions of a White Queen

97

(10)

Part II. Agent for Empire: Interventions in Central and West Africa, 1903--1908

An Imperial Spy in the Congo

107

(17)

A Plantation Mistress in Liberia

124

(19)

Part III. Feminist for a New Generation: Mastering Femininity in 1920s America

Taking Feminism on the Road

143

(20)

Masquerading as the Subject of Feminism

163

(19)

The Queen, the Sheik, the Sultana, and the Female Spectator

182

(21)

Conclusion: The White Queen in the Mirror, or Reflections on the Construction of White Feminist Identity

203

(10)

Notes

213

(28)

Bibliography

241

(10)

Index

251

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Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials