Author: Merril D. Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0759123322
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Boobs. Tits. Hooters. Knockers. Jugs. Breasts. We celebrate them; we revile them. They nourish us; they kill us. And regardless of what we call them, breasts have fascinated us since prehistoric times. This A-to-Z encyclopedia explores the historical magnitude and cultural significance of the breast over time and around the world. A team of international scholars from various disciplines provides key insights and information about the breast in art, history, fashion, social movements, medicine, sexuality, and more. Entries discuss depictions of breasts on ancient figurines, in Renaissance paintings, and in present-day advertisements. They examine how fashion has emphasized or de-emphasized the breast at various times. They tackle medical issues—such as breast augmentation and breast cancer—and controversies over breastfeeding. The breast as sexual object and even a site of smuggling are also covered. As a whole, the Cultural Encyclopedia of the Breast takes an engaging and accessible look at this notable body part.

Author: Victoria Pitts-Taylor
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1567206913
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 628

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Book Description
Pop culture and the media today are saturated with the focus on the aesthetics of the human body. Magazines and infotainment shows speculate whether this or that actress had breast implants or a nose job. Americans are not just focusing on celebrities but on themselves too and today have unprecedented opportunities to rework what nature gave them. One can now drop in to have cosmetic surgery at the local mall. Contemplating the superficial nature of it all grows tiresome, and pop culture vultures and students can get a better fix for their fascination with the body beautiful through the cultural insight provided in this amazing set. Cultural Encyclopedia of the Body is a treasure trove of essays that explore the human body alphabetically by part, detailing practices and beliefs from the past and present and from around the world that are sometimes mind-blowing and eye-popping. Body parts are examined through a multifaceted cultural lens. Readers will explore how the parts are understood, what they mean to disparate societies, how they are managed, treated, and transformed, and how they are depicted and represented. The entries draw from many disciplines that are concerned to some degree or another with human bodies, including anthropology archeology, sociology, religion, political history, philosophy, art history, literary studies, and medicine. The encyclopedia proffers information on a number of cultures, tribes, and customs from East and West. Ancient practices to the latest fad, which in fact might continue ancient practices, are illuminated. Other considerations that arise in the essays include comparisons among cultures, the changing perceptions of the body, and issues of race, gender, religion, community and belonging, ethnicity, power structures, human rights.

Author: Michael Kimmel
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0759123144
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Peter. Pecker. Wiener. Dick. Schlong. Penis. Whatever we choose to call it, the penis is more than just a body part. This A-to-Z encyclopedia explores the cultural meanings, interpretations, and activities associated with the penis over the centuries and across cultures. Scholars, activists, researchers and clinicians delve into the penis in antiquity, in art, in religion, in politics, in media, in music, and in the cultural imagination. They examine the penis as a problem, a fetishized commodity, a weapon, an object of play. Penile décor and fashions—from piercings to koteka—are treated with equal dignity. Explanation of common medical terms and not-so-common subcultural practices add to the broad scope of the book. Taken together, the Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis offers refreshing, thoughtful, and wide-ranging insight into this malleable, meaningful body part.

Author: Victoria Pitts-Taylor
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Explores the human body alphabetically by part, detailing practices and beliefs from the past and present and from around the world.

Author: Margo DeMello
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313064059
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
People everywhere have attempted to change their bodies in an effort to meet their cultural standards of beauty, as well as their religious and/or social obligations. Often times, this modification or adornment of their bodies is part of the complex process of creating and re-creating personal and social identities. Body painting has probably been practiced since the Paleolithic as archaeological evidence indicates, and the earliest human evidence of tattooing goes back to the Neolithic with mummies found in Europe, Central Asia, the Andes and the Middle East. Adornments such as jewelry have been found in the earliest human graves and bodies unearthed from five thousand years ago show signs of intentional head shaping. It is clear that adorning and modifying the body is a central human practice. Over 200 entries address the major adornments and modifications, their historical and cross-cultural locations, and the major cultural groups and places in which body modification has been central to social and cultural practices. This encyclopedia also includes background information on the some of the central figures involved in creating and popularizing tattooing, piercing, and other body modifications in the modern world. Finally, the book addresses some of the major theoretical issues surrounding the temporary and permanent modification of the body, the laws and customs regarding the marking of the body, and the social movements that have influenced or embraced body modification, and those which have been affected by it. All cultures everywhere have attempted to change their body in an attempt to meet their cultural standards of beauty, as well as their religious and or social obligations. In addition, people modify and adorn their bodies as part of the complex process of creating and re-creating their personal and social identities. Body painting has probably been practiced since the Paleolithic as archaeological evidence indicates, and the earliest human evidence of tattooing goes back to the Neolithic with mummies found in Europe, Central Asia, the Andes and the Middle East. Adornments such as jewelry have been found in the earliest human graves and bodies unearthed from five thousand years ago show signs of intentional head shaping. It is clear that adorning and modifying the body is a central human practice. Over 200 entries address the major adornments and modifications, their historical and cross-cultural locations, and the major cultural groups and places in which body modification has been central to social and cultural practices. This encyclopedia also includes background information on the some of the central figures involved in creating and popularizing tattooing, piercing, and other body modifications in the modern world. Finally, the book addresses some of the major theoretical issues surrounding the temporary and permanent modification of the body, the laws and customs regarding the marking of the body, and the social movements that have influenced or embraced body modification, and those which have been affected by it. Entries include, acupuncture, amputation, Auschwitz, P.T. Barnum, the Bible, body dysmorphic disorder, body piercing, branding, breast augmentation and reduction, Betty Broadbent, castration, Christianity, cross dressers, Dances Sacred and Profane, Egypt, female genital mutilation, foot binding, freak shows, genetic engineering, The Great Omi, Greco-Roman world, henna, infibulation, legislation & regulation, lip plates, medical tattooing, Meso-America, military tattoos, National Tattoo Association, nose piercing, obesity, permanent makeup, primitivism, prison tattooing, punk, rites of passage, scalpelling, silicone injections, Stalking Cat, suspensions, tanning, tattoo reality shows, tattooing, Thailand, transgender, tribalism.

Author: Victoria Pitts-Taylor
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Explores the human body alphabetically by part, detailing practices and beliefs from the past and present and from around the world.

Author: Louise H. Westling
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820320809
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In searching American literary landscapes for what they can reveal about our attitudes toward nature and gender, The Green Breast of the New World considers symbolic landscapes in twentieth-century American fiction, the characters who inhabit those landscapes, and the gendered traditions that can influence the figuration of both of these fictional elements. In this century, says Louise H. Westling, American literary responses to landscape and nature have been characterized by a puzzling mix of eroticism and misogyny, celebration and mourning, and reverence and disregard. Focusing on problems of gender conflict and imperialist nostalgia, The Green Breast of the New World addresses this ambivalence. Westling begins with a "deep history" of literary landscapes, looking back to the archaic Mediterranean/Mesopotamian traditions that frame European and American symbolic figurations of humans in the land. Drawing on sources as ancient as the Sumerian Hymns to Innana and the Epic of Gilgamesh, she reveals a tradition of male heroic identity grounded in an antagonistic attitude toward the feminized earth and nature. This identity recently has been used to mask a violent destruction of wilderness and indigenous peoples in the fictions of progress that have shaped our culture. Examining the midwestern landscapes of Willa Cather's Jim Burden and Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams, and the Mississippi Delta of William Faulkner's Thomas Sutpen and Isaac McCaslin and Eudora Welty's plantation families and small-town dwellers, Westling shows that these characters all participate in a cultural habit of gendering the landscape as female and then excusing their mistreatment of it by retreating into a nostalgia that erases their real motives, displaces responsibility, and takes refuge in attitudes of self-pitying adoration.

Author: Barron H. Lerner
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195161068
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Chronicles the various campaigns waged against breast cancer and its effects on women during the last century.

Author: Victoria R. Williams
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1137

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Book Description
This book documents hundreds of customs and traditions practiced in countries outside of the United States, showcasing the diversity of birth, coming-of-age, and death celebrations worldwide. From the beginning of our lives to the end, all of humanity celebrates life's milestones through traditions and unique customs. In the United States, we have specific events like baby showers, rites of passage such as Bat and Bar Mitzvahs and "sweet 16" birthday parties, and sober end-of-life traditions like obituaries and funeral services that honor those who have died. But what kinds of customs and traditions are practiced in other countries? How do people in other cultures welcome babies, prepare to enter into adulthood, and commemorate the end of the lives of loved ones? This three-volume encyclopedia covers more than 300 birth, life, and death customs, with the books' content organized chronologically by life stage. Volume 1 focuses on birth and childhood customs, Volume 2 documents adolescent and early-adulthood customs, and Volume 3 looks at aging and death customs. The entries in the first volume examine pre-birth traditions, such as baby showers and other gift-giving events, and post-birth customs, such as naming ceremonies, child-rearing practices, and traditions performed to ward off evil or promote good health. The second volume contains information about rites of passage as children become adults, including indigenous initiations, marriage customs, and religious ceremonies. The final volume concludes with coverage on customs associated with aging and death, such as retirement celebrations, elaborate funeral processions, and the creation of fantasy coffins. The set features beautiful color inserts that illustrate examples of celebrations and ceremonies and includes an appendix of excerpts from primary documents that include legislation on government-accepted names, wedding vows, and maternity/paternity leave regulations.

Author: Mineke Schipper
Publisher: Saqi Books
ISBN: 190890660X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Wild and strange stories have circulated about the female body since antiquity. While legends of poisoned hymens and fanged vaginas circulated, the first female figure – Mother Earth – was recreated as a crooked rib. Ranging from the absurd to the empowering, these myths not only survive but continue to wield power today. The Shrinking Goddess brings together myths about the female form and traces the subsequent male efforts to 'tame' it. Mineke Schipper examines how women's bodies have been represented since records began – the first Venus and vulva figures date to 40,000 BCE – and around the world. Drawing together the vast reservoir of myths, proverbs, art, science and scripture that shape how women are seen in the present day, Schipper reclaims the female body as a source of power. Readers of Angela Davis, Mary Beard, Audre Lorde, Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer will want to read this book.