Embodied Difference

Jamie A. Thomas is assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College.Christina Jackson is assistant professor of sociology at Stockton University.

Jamie A. Thomas and Christina Jackson's edited volume, Embodied Difference: Divergent Bodies in Public Discourse, represents an important contribution to this field. . . . Students and scholars interested in corporeal feminism will find the analyses of underresearched modes and contexts of embodiment collected in Embodied Difference to be of great value. . . The volume. . . fulfills its editor's aim to provide an outstanding example of how cross-disciplinary, intersectional feminist research can yield new insights into how policies, practices, and pop culture influence our interpretation of bodies in ways that tend to reinforce the unequal distribution of power and privilege along axes of gender, race, sexuality, class, and ability. Its call for further investigations into the covert operations of the Thing in everyday life sets a fresh agenda for feminist scholarship.

• Introduction: Approaching the Body Through Public-facing Scholarship in PhiladelphiaHow To Use This BookUnit One: The Rational Mind vs. The Criminal BodyPreface to Unit OneChapter 1 - Our Own Flesh and Blood: Putting the Body at the Center of Violence and Dehumanization - Krista K. ThomasonChapter 2 - Are We Our Brains? How Early Christianity Shaped Western Ideas About Power, Morality, and Personhood - Jessica WrightChapter 3 - Making the Case for Transfeminism: The Activist Philosophies of CeCe McDonald and Angela Davis - Ute BettrayUnit Two: The Deviant and Undesirable BodyPreface to Unit Two Chapter 4 - Bias, Brains, and Skulls: Tracing the Legacy of Scientific Racism in the 19th Century Works of Samuel George Morton and Friedrich Tiedemann - Paul Wolff Mitchell and John S. MichaelChapter 5 - Female Vampires as Embodied Critiques of Heteronormativity, Blood-Mixing, and Patriarchy: From Carmilla to Fledgling - Dorisa CostelloChapter 6 - Protest Bodies: The Right to Protect Your Own in Environmental Justice and Redevelopment Battles - Christina JacksonChapter 7 - Death and the Power of the Young Female Body: Iconic Legal Cases - Barry FurrowUnit Three: The Beautiful Body and Its PartsPreface to Unit ThreeChapter 8 - Gray Matters: Social Violence and the Victorian Surgical Textbook - Emily AugustChapter 9 - ‘Tuck in Your Derrière’: Butts and Bodies in Ballet and Tap - Kat RichterChapter 10 - The Year is 2093: Reanimation from Frankenstein to Prometheus as Sci-fi Metaphor for (Dis)Embodied Female Futures and Colonization of Space - Jamie A. Thomas