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Fat and the Body in the Long Nineteenth Century

Fat and the Body in the Long Nineteenth Century

Meanings, Measures, and Representations

Edited by Amy Shaw and Lynn Kennedy

Published by: University of Toronto Press

Imprint: University of Toronto Press

Digital download
9781487553418
Published: December 2024

Digital download
9781487553401
Published: December 2024

Description
Contents
Authors

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the body was a key focus of discourse. Fat and the Body in the Long Nineteenth Century animates discussion and analyses of fatness, highlighting how corporeal expectations fit into larger social systems and showing how interpretations have shifted over time. This collection examines a host of primary sources – including literature, art, medical treatises, journalism, political cartoons, soldiers’ letters home, and popular fiction – to identify trends in how fat was perceived and promoted in the English-speaking world over the long nineteenth century.

Divided into four thematic sections, the book addresses epistemologies, artistic and literary representations, the turn towards quantification and measurement, and the connections to imperialism and colonialism. It explores the complex debate about the meaning of fat and its signalling of health, beauty, moral strength, and class status. The book shows how contemporary presentations and discussions of fat offer insights into ideals of gender and race and the processes of imperialism and of professionalization in the social sciences and medicine. By tracing how debates shifted over time, the book ultimately reveals that there was no universal interpretation of fat as a positive or negative characteristic throughout the nineteenth century.

List of Figures and Tables

Introduction

Section I: Epistemologies and Philosophies

1. The Enfleshment of Difference: Medicalizing and Gendering the Fat Body in the Nineteenth Century
Kristen A. Hardy

2. To Measure Skulls, to Measure Waists: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Modern Health Standards
Bessie Rigakos and Wesley R. Bishop

Section II: Weights and Measures

3. “All young things are fat if they are in health”: The Shift from Qualitative to Quantitative Assessments of Infant Weight in the Nineteenth-Century United States
V. Lynn Kennedy

4. Physical Culture and the Denial of Fat in fin de siècle America
Conor Heffernan

5. Prison Bodies: The Height and Weight of Men in Canadian Prisons, 1874–1935
L. Antonie, K. Inwood, and H. Maxwell-Stewart

Section III: Cultural Representations and Constructions

6. Visual and Material Cultures of the Fat Body, 1780–1840: Representation, Commodification, and Display
Freya Gowrley

7. The Fat Body and Colonial Symbolism: Imperialism, Appetite, and Hunger in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
Tatiana Konrad

8. Visualizing the Body: The Mbopo Ritual and the Politics of Fatness in Southern Nigeria in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Nsima Udo

Section IV: Imperialism, Colonialism, and the Body Politic

9. Colonial Engorgement in the Pictorial Arts: “Fat” Uncle Sam in the Imperialist Debates, 1898–1902
Bonnie M. Miller

10. Gaining in Flesh: Canadian Soldiers in the War in South Africa
Amy J. Shaw

Conclusion

Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index

Amy J. Shaw is an associate professor in the Department of History and Religion at the University of Lethbridge.

V. Lynn Kennedy is an associate professor in the Department of History and Religion at the University of Lethbridge.