(Re)possessing beauty : : politics, poetics, change / / edited by Sallie McNamara.

• Superior document: Critical issues (Oxford, England)
• TeilnehmendeR: McNamara, Sallie,
• Place / Publishing House: Oxford, England : : Inter-Disciplinary Press,, [2014]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Series: Critical issues (Oxford, England)
• Physical Description: 1 online resource.

Ideas of beauty permeate our lives in ways of which we are often unaware, yet they are indicators of identity, transgression, sartorial codes and otherness. While contemporary society sees the dominance of Western hegemonic ideals of beauty, when comparing these to ideals in different cultures at different historical periods, attention is drawn to the instability of ‘beauty’. The work in this volume considers the ways individuals question, respond to, articulate reflect, challenge, modify or accept beauty within their lives, to show it can be powerful, destructive and transformative. They show that beauty is not always what it appears and can challenge common-sense preconceptions as to what is beautiful. The range of topics provide an important contribution to ongoing discussions and are testament to both the diversity and complexity of debate the concept engenders across different disciplines.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material / Sallie McNamara -- Pretty Girls Make Graves: A Contemporary Feminist Interpretation of the Ill-Fated Beauty in Three Early Cinemas / Kerry McElroy -- Mask and Mascara: The Female Masquerade in Women’s Historical Romances of the 1930s and 1940s / Sallie McNamara -- Complex Beauty: Oscar Wilde’s Aesthetic and Social Transformation / Liam Lynch -- The Somatechnics of Hair Straightening: Technology, Transformation and Social Change / Allison Vandenberg -- How Far to Beautiful? Thinness, Eating Disorders and Sexual Trauma / Lisa Hodge -- Constructing Phallic Beauty: Foreskin Restoration, Genital Cutting and Circumcisionism / Travis Wisdom -- Beauty and Eroticism in Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion / Sabah Carrim -- Outlawed Beauty: The (Homo)Erotic Sacrifice in Bataille, Genet and Mishima / Eva Bujalka -- An Obsession with Beauty is a Sign of a Declining Culture / Elizabeth Barnett.