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

Description

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 Emily S. Rosenberg is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930 and A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory, both also published by Duke University Press, and the editor of A World Connecting, 1870–1945. Contents......Page 8 Introduction......Page 10 Chapter One. Colonial Crossings: Prostitution, Disease, and the Boundaries of Empire during the Philippine-American War // Paul A. Kramer......Page 26 Chapter Two. Moral, Purposeful, and Healthful: The World of Child’s Play, Bodybuilding, and Nation-Building at the American Circus // Janet M. Davis......Page 51 Chapter Three. Making Broken Bodies Whole in a Shell-Shocked World // Annessa C. Stagner......Page 70 Chapter Four. Physical Culture’s World of Bodies: Transnational Participatory Pastiche and the Body Politics of America’s Globalized Mass Culture // Shanon Fitzpatrick......Page 92 Chapter Five. “The Most Beautiful Chinese Girl in the World”: Anna May Wong’s Transnational Racial Modernity // Shirley Jennifer Lim......Page 118 Chapter Six. Roosevelt’s Body and National Power // Frank Costigliola......Page 134 Chapter Seven. Making “Brown Babies”: Race and Gender after World War II // Brenda Gayle Plummer......Page 156 Chapter Eight. Regulating Borders and Bodies: U.S. Immigration and Public Health Policy // Natalia Molina......Page 182 Chapter Nine. The American Look: The Nation in the Shape of a Woman // Emily S. Rosenberg......Page 198 Chapter Ten. Sammy Lee: Narratives of Asian American Masculinity and Race in Decolonizing Asia // Mary Ting Yi Lui......Page 218 Chapter Eleven. Counting the Bodies in Vietnam // Marilyn B. Young......Page 239 Chapter Twelve. “Nobody Wants These People”: Reagan’s Immigration Crisis and the Containment of Foreign Bodies // Kristina Shull......Page 250 Epilogue. When the Body Disappears // Emily S. Rosenberg and Shanon Fitzpatrick......Page 273 Bibliography......Page 298 Contributors......Page 326 Index......Page 330