Written on the body : the tattoo in European and American history / edited by Jane Caplan.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Caplan, Jane, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tattooing--Europe--History.

Tattooing.

Tattooing--United States--History.

Tattooing--Social aspects--Europe--History.

Tattooing--Social aspects--United States--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (346 pages)

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2000]

Summary:

Despite the social sciences' growing fascination with tattooing--and the immense popularity of tattoos themselves--the practice has not left much of a historical record. And, until very recently, there was no good context for writing a serious history of tattooing in the West. This collection exposes, for the first time, the richness of the tattoo's European and American history from antiquity to the present day. In the process, it rescues tattoos from their stereotypical and sensationalized association with criminality. The tattoo has long hovered in a space between the cosmetic and the punitive. Throughout its history, the status of the tattoo has been complicated by its dual association with slavery and penal practices on the one hand and exotic or forbidden sexuality on the other. The tattoo appears often as an involuntary stigma, sometimes as a self-imposed marker of identity, and occasionally as a beautiful corporal decoration. This volume analyzes the tattoo's fluctuating, often uncomfortable position from multiple angles. Individual chapters explore fascinating segments of its history--from the metaphorical meanings of tattooing in Celtic society to the class-related commodification of the body in Victorian Britain, from tattooed entertainers in Germany to tattooing and piercing as self-expression in the contemporary United States. But they also accumulate to form an expansive, textured view of permanent bodily modification in the West. By combining empirical history, powerful cultural analysis, and a highly readable style, this volume both draws on and propels the ongoing effort to write a meaningful cultural history of the body. The contributors, representing several disciplines, have all conducted extensive original research into the Western tattoo. Together, they have produced an unrivalled account of its history. They are, in addition to the editor, Clare Anderson, Susan Benson, James Bradley, Ian Duffield, Juliet Fleming, Alan Govenar, Harriet Guest, Mark Gustafson, C. P. Jones, Charles MacQuarrie, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Stephan Oettermann, Jennipher A. Rosecrans, and Abby Schrader.

Contents:

Oettermann

The changing image of tattooing in American culture, 1846-1966 / Alan Govenar

Inscriptions of the self: reflections on tattooing and piercing in contemporary Euro-America / Susan Benson.

Stigma and tattoo / C.P. Jones

The tattoo in the later Roman empire and beyond / Mark Gustafson

Insular Celtic tattooing: history, myth and metaphor / Charles W. MacQuarrie

Wearing the universe: symbolic markings in early modern England / Jennipher Allen Rosecrans

The Renaissance tattoo / Juliet Fleming

Curiously marked: tattooing and gender difference in eighteenth-century British perceptions of the South Pacific / Harriet Guest

Godna: inscribing Indian convicts in the nineteenth century / Clare Anderson

Skin deep devotions: religious tattoos and convict transportation to Australia / Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Ian Duffield

Body commodification? Class and tattoos in Victorian Britain / James Bradley

'National tattooing': traditions of tattooing in nineteenth-century Europe / Jane Caplan

Branding the other/tattooing the self: bodily inscription among convicts in Russia and the Soviet Union / Abby M. Schrader

On display: tattooed entertainers in America and Germany / Stephan

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 302-305) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691238258

0691238251

OCLC:

1273977008