About the Book
From portrayals of African women's bodies in early modern European travel accounts to the relation between celibacy and Indian nationalism to the fate of the Korean "comfort women" forced into prostitution by the occupying Japanese army during the Second World War--the essays collected in Bodies in Contact demonstrate how a focus on the body as a site of cultural encounter provides essential insights into world history. Together these essays reveal the "body as contact zone" as a powerful analytic rubric for interpreting the mechanisms and legacies of colonialism and illuminating how attention to gender alters understandings of world history. Rather than privileging the operations of the Foreign Office or gentlemanly capitalists, these historical studies render the home, the street, the school, the club, and the marketplace visible as sites of imperial ideologies. Bodies in Contact brings together important scholarship on colonial gender studies gathered from journals around the world. Breaking from approaches to world history as the history of "the West and the rest," the contributors offer a multi-centered perspective.They examine aspects of imperial regimes including the Ottoman, Mughal, Soviet, British, Han, and Spanish, over six hundred years--from the fifteenth century through the mid-twentieth.
Discussing subjects as diverse as slavery and travel, ecclesiastical colonialism and military occupation, marriage and property, nationalism and football, immigration and temperance, Bodies in Contact puts women, gender, and sexuality squarely at the center of the "master narratives" of imperialism and world history. Contributors Joseph S. Alter Tony Ballantyne Antoinette Burton Elisa Camsicioli Mary Ann Fay Carter Vaughn Findley Heidi Gengenbach Shoshana Keller Hyun Sook Kim Mire Koikari Siobhan Lambert-Hurley Melani McAlister Patrick McDevitt Jennifer Morgan Lucy Eldersveld Murphy Rosalind O'Hanlon Rebecca Overmyer-Velazquez Fiona Paisley Adele Perry Sean Quinlan Mrinalini Sinha Emma Jinhua Teng Julia C. Wells
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Bodies, Empires and World Histories / Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton 1
I. Thresholds of Modernity: Mapping Genders
Masculinity and the Bangash Nawabs of Farrukhabad / Rosalind O'Hanlon 19
An Island of Women: Gender in the Qing Travel Writing about Taiwan / Emma Jinhua Teng 38
Male Travelers, Female Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Ideology, 1500–1700 / Jennifer L. Morgan 54
Christian Morality in Spain: The Nahua Woman in the Franciscan Imaginary / Rebecca Overmeyer-Velazquez 67
Eva's Men: Gender and Power at the Cape of Good Hope / Julia C. Wells 84
Colonial Bodies, Hygiene, and Abolitionist Politics in the Eighteenth-Century France / Sean Quinlan 106
II. Global Empires, Local Encounters
Women, Property, and Power in Eighteenth-Century Cairo / Mary Ann Fay 125
Reproducing Colonialism in British Columbia, 1849–1871 / Adele Perry 143
Native American and Metis Women as "Public Mothers" in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest / Lucy Eldersveld Murphy 164
Britishness, Clubbability, and the Colonial Public Sphere / Mrinalini Sinha 183
Muscular Catholicism: Nationalism, Masculinity, and Gaelic Team Sports, 1884–1916 / Patrick F. McDevitt 201
Reproducing the "French Race": Immigration and Pronationalism in Early-Twentieth Century France / Elisa Camiscioli 219
Race Hysteria, Darwin 1938 / Fiona Paisley 234
Tattooed Secrets: Women's History in Magude District, Southern Mozambique / Heidi Gengenbach 253
III. The Mobility of Politics and the Politics of Mobility
An Ottoman Occidentalist in Europe: Ahmad Midhat Meets Madame Gulnar, 1889 / Carter Vaughn Findley 277
Out of India: The Journey of the Begam of Bhopal, 1901–1930 / Siobhan Lambert Hurley 293
Celibacy, Sexuality, and Nationalism in North India / Joseph S. Alter 310
Women's Liberation and Islam in Soviet Uzbekistan, 1926–1941 / Shoshana Keller 321
Gender, Powers, and U. S. Imperialism: The Occupation of Japan, 1945–1952 / Mire Koikari 342
History and Memory: The "Comfort Women" Controversy / Hyun Sook Kim 363
"One Black Allah": The Middle East in the Cultural Politics of African American Liberation, 1955–1970 / Melani McAllister 383
Postscript: Bodies, Genders, Empires: Reimagining World Histories / Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton 405
Contributors 425
Index 441
About the Author :
Tony Ballantyne is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He is the author of Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire and the editor of Science, Empire, and the European Exploration of the Pacific.
Antoinette Burton is Catherine C. and Bruce A. Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies, Department of History, University of Illinois. She is the author of Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India and At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain. She is the editor of After the Imperial Turn: Thinking with and through the Nation (also published by Duke University Press) and a coeditor of The Journal of Women’s History.
Review :
Bodies in Contact brings together important scholarship on colonial gender studies gathered from journals around the world. Breaking with approaches to world history as the history of "the West and the rest," the contributors offer a panoramic perspective. They examine aspects of imperial regimes including the Ottoman, Mughal, Soviet, British, Han, and Spanish, over a span of six hundred years--from the fifteenth century through the mid-twentieth. Discussing subjects as diverse as slavery and travel, ecclesiastical colonialism and military occupation, marriage and property, nationalism and football, immigration and temperance, Bodies in Contact puts women, gender, and sexuality at the center of the "master narratives" of imperialism and world history. "Bodies in Contact is an excellent work, full of lively essays based on an engaging variety of historical perspectives. Instructors in world history rightly complain that there is little available to students that covers gender. This volume helps fill that gap with articles on important issues in the history of contact and empire."--Bonnie G. Smith, author of The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice "Bodies in Contact challenges the master narratives of imperialism in world history that focus on high politics and economics... With a stong 'cast' of academic researchers, who have pioneered new ground in their respective areas, this is a lively and illuminating collection."--History 2007 "A distinguishing feature of this collection is its comprehensiveness... This is a strong collection that points to new directions in the field of world history and is recommended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students."--Christopher Lee, History, Reviews of New Books "Individually, the chapters are excellent and interesting. Each one nudges the reader to learn something new and offers methodological techniques for uncovering new and relatively inaccessible materials."--Londa Scheibinger, American Historical Review "Historians of all persuasions will find Ballantyne and Burton's arguments ... persuasive and compelling... As the editors intend, the volume is very likely to 'stimulate debate, discussion, and even perhaps a new generation of historians.'..." --Dorothy L. Hodgson, International Journal of African Historical Studies "Bodies in Contact is a significant and erudite addition to the thriving field of global history." --Rochona Majumdar, Journal of World History "A terrific read...The variety and quality of these diverse narratives make the book attractive to the general reader, and Bodies in Contact indeed could be useful in the undergraduate classroom"--Carolyn Goffman, H-Net Reviews "In all, the collection constitutes a most comprehensive marshalling of recent research on gender, cultures of colonialism and the colonial encounter and should be attractive to a wide range of specialized readers." --Barbara Bush, History "This collection of essays is designed to provoke questions, to raise issues, to incite debate about the place of gender, race, and class in the construction of modern imperial and colonial identities. Balanced against the histories that Ballantyne and Burton argue permeate the modern university, these essays provide a necessary counterweight, a mode from which traditional histories can be interrogated."--Audrey De Long, Sixteenth Century Journal "Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton have assembled a first-rate collection of essays that re-energizes the concept of 'World History.'"--Carolyn Goffman, H-Gender-Mideast, H-Net Reviews "Ballantyne and Burton's volume offers an excellent introduction to the gendered histories of imperialism and colonialism across historical time and in diverse cultural contexts. More importantly the essays in this collection highlight the deep epistemic ramifications of globalization and how the mechanics of it are embodied in our day-to-day interactions even today."--Anita Anantharam, Itinerario "Bodies in Contact marks a significant addition to the literature placing colonial history in international context, and signals the movement of transnational history to the fore of imperial studies."--Rachel Berger, Atlantic Studies "With a strong 'cast' of academic researchers, who have pioneered new ground in their respective fields, this is a lively and illuminating collection... a most comprehensive marshalling or recent research on gender, cultures of colonialism and the colonial encounter and should be attractive to a wide range of specialized readers."--HISTORY, Vol 92, Issue 1, Number 305, Jan 2007
