Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso

In this slim volume with an attention-grabbing title, Kali Nicole Gross draws upon the sensationalism of a murder case from the 1880s to pull readers into a nuanced exploration of the meaning of race and gender in late nineteenth-century urban America. While it picks up on many of the themes of her earlier book, Colored Amazons (2006), this monograph will likely prove more accessible to nonspecialists as it focuses on the details of a single murder case and a small cast of characters. Indeed, the book uses many of the hallmarks of the “true crime” genre. For example, Gross includes the biographical background and descriptions of the physical appearance and distinct mannerisms of the witnesses, officers, and suspects involved in the case. She also reveals the story for the reader slowly, much as it unfolded for the general public in 1887. Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso, however, is very much the work of a seasoned historian. Gross skillfully weaves in deeply informed historical context on the shifting standards of policing, the association of blackness with criminality, urban race relations, the deeply rooted violence of racism, and conceptions of black women's sexuality

Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Human sexuality · Meaning (existential · Media studies · Race (biology · Racism · Sensationalism · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society