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The aim of this book is to explore the body in various historical contexts and to take it as a point of departure for broader historiographical projects. The chapters in the volume present the ways in which the body constitutes a valuable and productive object of historical analysis, especially as a lens through which to trace histories of social, political, and cultural phenomena and processes. More specifically, the authors use the body as a tool for critical re-examination of particular histories of human experience, and of societal and cultural practices, thus contributing to the burgeoning area of body history in terms of both specific case studies as well as historiography in general.
List of contents
Introduction: "The Past is Written on My Body": Bodies and History Part I: The Liminal Body 1. Fortunio Liceti's Strategic Use of Lusus Naturae in De Monstris (1634-1665) and the Self-Assured Semiology of Naturalized Early Modern Science 2. A Tlaxcalan Midwife's Toolkit: The Body, Medicine, Childbirth, and Contact Zone in Early to Mid-Colonial New Spain 3. Ecstasies, Stigmata, and Visions: Body and Sanctity in La Civiltà Cattolica in the Age of Positivism (1888-1890) Part II: The Modern Body 4. Making the Body Productive/Making "the Body" Productive 5. Corpulence, Modernity, and Transcendence in the Early Twentieth Century Part III: The Visual Body 6. The Visual Politics of the Body in Germany Between the Two World Wars 7. Representing AIDS: KS Lesions, US Visual Culture, and the Body as Canvas (1983-1993) Part IV: The Punished Body 8. The Criminal's Hair: Forensic Practices (1600-1945) 9. Citizen to Convict: The Consumption of the Body in the Age of Prisoner Reentry Part V: The Entangled Body 10. Aesth/ethical Bodies: Bracha Ettinger's Eurydices and the Encounter with the Other's History 11. The King's Four Bodies: Kantorowicz, Schmitt, Henry, and Hal
About the author
Justyna Jajszczok is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of English, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland.
Aleksandra Musiał is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland.
Summary
This book proposes various ways of conceptualizing the body and of examining its relationship to history and historiography. Chapters focus on specific body-related histories, with the overall goal of accentuating the place, the role, and the use of the body in history, culture, and the arts.
