A Centre of Wonders : : The Body in Early America / / ed. by Janet Moore Lindman, Michele Lise Tarter.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Backlist 2000-2013
• MitwirkendeR: Brown, Kathleen M.,; Dillon, Elizabeth Maddock,; Eden, Trudy,; Finch, Martha L.,; George, Robert Blair St.,; Lindman, Janet Moore,; Melish, Joanne Pope,; Miller, Jacquelyn C.,; Nash, Alice,; Shoemaker, Nancy,; Smith, Todd D.,; Spear, Jennifer M.,; Stabile, Susan M.,; Tarter, Michele Lise,; Toulouse, Teresa A.,
• HerausgeberIn: Lindman, Janet Moore,; Tarter, Michele Lise,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2018]; ©2001
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (296 p.) :; 7 halftones, 1 line drawing

Images of bodies and bodily practices abound in early America: from spirit possession, Fasting Days, and infanticide to running the gauntlet, going "naked as a sign," flogging, bundling, and scalping. All have implications for the study of gender, sexuality, masculinity, illness, the "body politic," spirituality, race, and slavery. The first book devoted solely to the history and theory of the body in early American cultural studies brings together authors representing diverse academic disciplines.Drawing on a wide range of archival sources-including itinerant ministers' journals, Revolutionary tracts and broadsides, advice manuals, and household inventories-they approach the theoretical analysis of the body in exciting new ways. A Centre of Wonders covers such varied topics as dance and movement among Native Americans; invading witch bodies in architecture and household spaces; rituals of baptism, conversion, and church discipline; eighteenth-century women's journaling; and the body as a rhetorical device in the language of diplomacy.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- "The earthly frame, a minute fabrick, a Centre of Wonders" -- I THE PERMEABILITY OF BODIES AND ENVIRONMENTS -- Witchcraft, Bodily Affliction, and Domestic Space in Seventeenth-Century New England -- Food, Assimilation, and the Malleability of the Human Body in Early Virginia -- "Civilized" Bodies and the "Savage" Environment of Early New Plymouth -- The Body Politic and the Body Somatic -- II DEMARCATIONS OF THE BODY: FLUIDITY AND CONTAINMENT -- Murderous Uncleanness -- "Clean of blood, without stain or mixture" -- A "Doctrine of Signatures" -- III BODIES IN PERFORMANCE: CORPOREAL MANIFESTATIONS OF IDENTITY -- Nursing Fathers and Brides of Christ -- Quaking in the Light -- "Antic Deportments and Indian Postures" -- The Body Baptist -- IV BODIES IN DISCOURSE: RACE, IDEOLOGY, AND PUBLIC RHETORIC -- Hannah Duston's Bodies -- Body Language -- Emancipation and the Em-bodiment of "Race" -- The Problematics of Absence -- Selected Bibliography -- Contributors -- Index