ABSTRACT

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.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

“The Past Is Written on My Body”: Bodies and History

part I|44 pages

The Liminal Body

chapter 2|13 pages

A Tlaxcalan Midwife’s Toolkit

The Body, Medicine, Childbirth, and Contact Zone in Early to Mid-Colonial New Spain

chapter 3|13 pages

Ecstasies, Stigmata, and Visions

Body and Sanctity in La Civiltà Cattolica in the Age of Positivism (1888–1890)

part III|31 pages

The Visual Body

chapter 7|8 pages

Representing AIDS

KS Lesions, US Visual Culture, and the Body as Canvas (1983–1993)

part IV|31 pages

The Punished Body

chapter 8|13 pages

The Criminal’s Hair

Forensic Practices (1600–1945)

chapter 9|16 pages

Citizen to Convict

The Consumption of the Body in the Age of Prisoner Reentry

part V|25 pages

The Entangled Body

chapter 10|12 pages

Aesth/Ethical Bodies

Bracha Ettinger’s Eurydices and the Encounter With the Other’s History

chapter 11|11 pages

The King’s Four Bodies

Kantorowicz, Schmitt, Henry, and Hal