Body Studies: an introduction

While body studies is a rapidly expanding field in anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, there are very few texts for professors to assign their students, and none that take the topics and theories from these disciplines, and combine them into one single, easily-accessible text for students. That means that professors who teach courses on the body rely upon a variety of books, ethnographies and collections, and many others simply create their own readers with articles from books and journals. An Introduction to Body Studieswould be the first comprehensive textbook available for college use. It will look at the body from a historical and cross-cultural perspective, and will consider the social and cultural construction of the body, the body as metaphor, the social and cultural markings on the body, and how ideas about the body have changed over time.