Jacqueline Bobo

Bobo earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1971, her Masters in 1980 at San Francisco State University, and her PhD in film and television at the University of Oregon in 1989.[1]

Bobo has worked on studying the response of Black women for films such as Daughters of the Dust, The Color Purple, Gone with the Wind, Civil Brand, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Claudine. She interviewed a group of selected Black women and asked them how they felt about their portrayal in the 1985 film The Color Purple.[3][4] She has analyzed the language used in media representing Black women and how it has changed within the last century.[5] Bobo's observations contextualize the historical aspects perceived in these media outlets.[5] Bobo's work in Black Women as Cultural Readers is regarded as a "seminal stud[y] helping critics and other readers better understand large groups of women who have heretofore been made invisible in academia".[2]

In Black Feminist Cultural Criticism, Bobo's essays explore multiple perspectives on black feminist cultural studies, both from an academic perspective and an everyday perspective. Bobo's writings have been compared to Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, written by bell hooks, as both works explore black feminist theory: "Each author contributes to a collective project of feminist canon formation and points toward the future of scholarship by and about black women."[6]