Stigma: Marking Skin in the Early Modern World

The early modern period opened a new era in the history of dermal marking. Intensifying global travel and trade, especially the slave trade, bought diverse skin-marking practices into contact as never before. Stigma examines the distinctive skin cultures and marking methods of Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas as they began to circulate and reshape one another in the early modern world.

By highlighting the interwoven histories of tattooing, branding, stigmata, baptismal and beauty mark...