Approaching Facial Difference: Past and Present

by Mark Bradley (Editor), Emily Cock (Editor), Garthine Walker (Editor), Patricia Skinner (Editor), David Houston Jones (Editor)

Overview

What is a face and how does it relate to personhood? Approaching Facial Difference: Past and Present offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the many ways in which faces have been represented in the past and present, focusing on the issue of facial difference and disfigurement read in the light of shifting ideas of beauty and ugliness.

Faces are central to all human social interactions, yet their study has been much overlooked by disability scholars and historians of medicine alike. By examining the main linguistic, visual and material approaches to the face from antiquity to contemporary times, contributors place facial diversity at the heart of our historical and cultural narratives.

This cutting-edge collection of essays will be an invaluable resource for humanities scholars working across history, literature and visual culture, as well as modern practitioners in education and psychology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350142978
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/28/2019
Series:	Facialities: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Human Face
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Patricia Skinner is Wellcome Research Fellow in History of Medicine at Swansea University, UK.

Mark Bradley has been involved with the Iranian church for over 20 years and lectures in Church and Mission history.

Emily Cock is Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research at Swansea University, UK.

GARTHINE WALKER  is Senior Lecturer in History at Cardiff University. Her publications include Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Writing Early Modern History(Arnold, 2005), and essays and articles on topics ranging from abduction, rape and criminal households to the influence of psychoanalysis and modernisation theory in historical writing.

Patricia Skinner is Wellcome Research Fellow in History of Medicine at Swansea University, UK.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Situating the Different Face, Patricia Skinner (Swansea University, UK) and Emily Cock (Swansea University, UK)

PART 1: LANGUAGE
2. Dis/enabling Courtesy and Chivalry in the Middle English and Early Modern Gawain Romances and Ballads, Bonnie Millar (University of Nottingham, UK)
3. 'A Great Blemish to her Beauty': Female Facial Disfigurement in Early Modern England, Michelle Webb (University of Exeter, UK)
4. Does Talking about Disfigurement Risk Perpetuating Stigma? Jane Frances (Changing Faces, UK)

PART 2: VISIBILITY
5. Hair Loss as Facial Disfigurement in Ancient Rome? Jane Draycott (University of Glasgow, UK)
6. Portrait? Likeness? Composite? Facial Difference in Forensic Art, Kathryn Smith (Liverpool John Moores University, UK)
7. From 'Staring' to 'Not Caring': Development of Psychological Growth and Wellbeing among Adults with Cleft Lip and Palate, Patricia Neville (University of Bristol, UK), Andrea Waylen (University of Bristol, UK), Sara Ryan (University of Oxford, UK) and Aidan Searle (University of Bristol, UK)
8. Making Up the Female Face: Pain and Imagination in the Music Videos of CocoRosie, Morna Laing (University of the Arts, London, UK)

PART 3: MATERIALITY
9. Archaeological Facial Depiction for People from the Past with Facial Differences, Caroline Wilkinson (Liverpool John Moores University, UK)
10. “Trotule (Trotula) Puts Many Things on to Decorate and Embellish the Face but I Intend Solely to Remove Infection”: L'Abbe Poutrel and his Chirurgerie c.1300, Theresa Tyers (Swansea University, UK)
11. Disrupting Our Sense of the Past: Medical Photographs that Push Interpreters to the Limits of Historical Analysis, Jason Bate (University of Exeter, UK)

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

This extraordinary collection of essays reveals the ways in which the intersections of gender, cultural notions of beauty and wholeness, and physical difference articulate how people in the West respond to human faces. By explicating the relationship between facial difference and notions of moral soundness, disease, and anxiety-and its apparent continuity throughout the whole of European history-the editors and contributors challenge readers and researchers to re-evaluate modern-day assumptions about beauty and difference based upon their presentation of the past.” —Linda E. Mitchell, Professor of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA

“This engaging multi-disciplinary study encourages us to 'look' at the face and its multiple facets from a variety of points of view. It is a much-needed first step in gaining a better, more holistic understanding of the face and its perceptions throughout time.” —Marjorie Gehrhardt, Lecturer in French History, University of Reading, UK

From the Publisher