Through close readings of slave narratives, scrapbooks, travel illustration, documentary film and photography, as well as collage, craft, and sculpture, Jasmine Nichole Cobb explores Black hair as a visual material through which to reimagine the sensual experience of Blackness.

List of Illustrations  viii
Acknowledgments  xiii
Introduction. New Growth: Black Hair and Liberation  1
1. Archive: Slavery, Sentiment, and Feeling  25
2. Texture: The Coarseness of Racial Capitalism  57
3. Touch: Camera Images and Contact Revisions  97
4. Surface: The Art of Black Hair  131
Conclusion. Crowning Gestures  155
Notes  161
Bibliography  177
Index  193

Jasmine Nichole Cobb is Professor of African and African American Studies and of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University. She is the author of Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century.