Body and Nation

The Global Realm of U.S. Body Politics in the Twentieth Century

Emily S. Rosenberg, Shanon Fitzpatrick, Emily S. Rosenberg, Shanon Fitzpatrick

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780822356752, 9780822356646
• eBook ISBN: 9780822376712
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Body and Nation interrogates the connections among the body, the nation, and the world in twentieth-century U.S. history. The idea that bodies and bodily characteristics are heavily freighted with values that are often linked to political and social spheres remains underdeveloped in the histories of America's relations with the rest of the world. Attentive to diverse state and nonstate actors, the contributors provide historically grounded insights into the transnational dimensions of biopolitics. Their subjects range from the regulation of prostitution in the Philippines by the U.S. Army to Cold War ideals of American feminine beauty, and from "body counts" as metrics of military success to cultural representations of Mexican migrants in the United States as public health threats. By considering bodies as complex, fluctuating, and interrelated sites of meaning, the contributors to this collection offer new insights into the workings of both soft and hard power.

Contributors. Frank Costigliola, Janet M. Davis, Shanon Fitzpatrick, Paul A. Kramer, Shirley Jennifer Lim, Mary Ting Yi Lui, Natalia Molina, Brenda Gayle Plummer, Emily S. Rosenberg, Kristina Shull, Annessa C. Stagner, Marilyn B. Young

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One. Colonial Crossings: Prostitution, Disease, and the Boundaries of Empire during the Philippine-American War // Paul A. Kramer
• Chapter Two. Moral, Purposeful, and Healthful: The World of Child’s Play, Bodybuilding, and Nation-Building at the American Circus // Janet M. Davis
• Chapter Three. Making Broken Bodies Whole in a Shell-Shocked World // Annessa C. Stagner
• Chapter Four. Physical Culture’s World of Bodies: Transnational Participatory Pastiche and the Body Politics of America’s Globalized Mass Culture // Shanon Fitzpatrick
• Chapter Five. “The Most Beautiful Chinese Girl in the World”: Anna May Wong’s Transnational Racial Modernity // Shirley Jennifer Lim
• Chapter Six. Roosevelt’s Body and National Power // Frank Costigliola
• Chapter Seven. Making “Brown Babies”: Race and Gender after World War II // Brenda Gayle Plummer
• Chapter Eight. Regulating Borders and Bodies: U.S. Immigration and Public Health Policy // Natalia Molina
• Chapter Nine. The American Look: The Nation in the Shape of a Woman // Emily S. Rosenberg
• Chapter Ten. Sammy Lee: Narratives of Asian American Masculinity and Race in Decolonizing Asia // Mary Ting Yi Lui
• Chapter Eleven. Counting the Bodies in Vietnam // Marilyn B. Young
• Chapter Twelve. “Nobody Wants These People”: Reagan’s Immigration Crisis and the Containment of Foreign Bodies // Kristina Shull
• Epilogue. When the Body Disappears // Emily S. Rosenberg and Shanon Fitzpatrick
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index