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Under the Skin : Tattoos, Scalps, and the Contested Language of Bodies in Early America by Mairin Odle (2022, Hardcover)
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With 176 pages of detailed content, this first edition includes illustrations that bring the text to life, making it a compelling read for a wide audience, including ages 9-12, young adults, and adults.
- Buy It NowUnder the Skin: Tattoos, Scalps & Contested Language of Bodies in Early America
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About this product
Product Identifiers
PublisherUniversity of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN-101512823163
ISBN-139781512823165
eBay Product ID (ePID)3057270388
Product Key Features
Book TitleUnder the Skin : Tattoos, Scalps, and the Contested Language of Bodies in Early America
Number of Pages176 Pages
LanguageEnglish
Publication Year2022
TopicBODYART & Tattooing, United States / Colonial Period (1600-1775), Customs & Traditions, Native American
IllustratorYes
GenreArt, Social Science, History
AuthorMairin Odle
Book SeriesEarly American Studies
FormatHardcover
Dimensions
Item Height0.7 in
Item Weight15.5 Oz
Item Length9.5 in
Item Width7 in
Additional Product Features
LCCN2022-007570
Dewey Edition23
Dewey Decimal391.65097309033
Table Of ContentIntroduction. Stories Written on the Body Chapter 1. Pownced, Pricked, or Paynted: Colonial Interpretations, Indigenous Tattoos Chapter 2. The "Ill Effects of It": Reading and Rewriting the Cross-Cultural Tattoo Chapter 3. Pricing the Part: Economies of Violence and Stories of Scalps Chapter 4. Playing Possum: Scalping Survivors and Embodied Memory Epilogue. Narrative Legacies and Settler Appropriations Notes Index Acknowledgments
SynopsisAs part of their contests for power, colonial and Indigenous societies made many attempts to transform one another's appearance: changing clothes, cutting hair, piercing or stretching ears (or removing earrings), and applying (or removing) paint and makeup, as well as deploying a range of violent acts that maimed, mutilated, or marked both the dead and the living. The enslaved might be branded, war captives might have finger joints removed, and those punished for crimes might have ears or noses cropped. There, were other marks, less consciously crafted by human hands yet still legible: scars and blindness from smallpox, rotting noses from syphilis. These traces on the body could prompt panic and hostility, or curiosity and research, or desire, mockery, or wonder. Most notably, they prompted new stories about which types of difference mattered-and how to create, or erase, those differences.... Studying the marks of collective and personal experience on early American bodies makes visible to us a world of signs that could indicate affiliation, alienation, conflict, and commodification. In a world characterized by increasing long-distance travel, imperial expansion, and the circulation of stories about and images of strange people and places, crucial questions existed: Who are you? What are your allegiances? And what does your appearance tell us, not just about you but about the people you have met and the places you have been? Book jacket., Under the Skin investigates the role of cross-cultural body modification in seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century North America, revealing that the practices of tattooing and scalping were crucial to interactions between Natives and newcomers. These permanent and painful marks could act as signs of alliance or signs of conflict, producing a complex bodily archive of cross-cultural entanglement. Indigenous body modification practices were adopted and transformed by colonial powers, making tattooing and scalping key forms of cultural and political contestation in early America. Although these bodily practices were quite distinct--one a painful but generally voluntary sign of accomplishment and affiliation, the other a violent assault on life and identity--they were linked by growing colonial perceptions that both were crucial elements of "Nativeness." Tracing the transformation of concepts of bodily integrity, personal and collective identities, and the sources of human difference, Under the Skin investigates both the lived physical experience and the contested metaphorical power of early American bodies. Struggling for power on battlefields, in diplomatic gatherings, and in intellectual exchanges, Native Americans and Anglo-Americans found their physical appearances dramatically altered by their interactions with one another. Contested ideas about the nature of human and societal difference translated into altered appearances for many early Americans. In turn, scars and symbols on skin prompted an outpouring of stories as people debated the meaning of such marks. Perhaps paradoxically, individuals with culturally ambiguous or hybrid appearances prompted increasing efforts to insist on permanent bodily identity. By the late eighteenth century, ideas about the body, phenotype, and culture were increasingly articulated in concepts of race. Yet even as the interpretations assigned to inscribed flesh shifted, fascination with marked bodies remained.
LC Classification NumberGT2346.U6O46 2022
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