Dyes and Dolls: Multicultural Barbie and the Merchandising of Difference

ann ducilleis associate professor of English and African American Studies at Wesleyan University. She is the author of The Coupling Convention: Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women's Fiction (New York: Oxford UP, 1993) and is currently working on two other books: “The Black Feminist Reader,” an edited volume of black feminist criticism, and “Inconspicuous Consumption: Labor, Leisure, and the Lady in Black Middle-Class Culture,” in which Barbie figures in the last chapter.