Approaching Facial Difference Past and Present [Hardcover]

What is a face and how does it relate to personhood?Approaching Facial Difference: Past and Presentoffers an interdisciplinary exploration of the many ways in which faces have been represented in the past and present, focusing on the issue of facial difference and disfigurement read in the light of shifting ideas of beauty and ugliness.

Faces are central to all human social interactions, yet their study has been much overlooked by disability scholars and historians of medicine alike. By examining the main linguistic, visual and material approaches to the face from antiquity to contemporary times, contributors place facial diversity at the heart of our historical and cultural narratives.

This cutting-edge collection of essays will be an invaluable resource for humanities scholars working across history, literature and visual culture, as well as modern practitioners in education and psychology.

Patricia Skinneris Research Professor in History at Swansea University, UK. She is also co-editor ofSocial History of Medicine.

Emily Cockis Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research at Swansea University, UK.

List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Situating the Different Face,Patricia Skinner (Swansea University, UK) and Emily Cock (Swansea University, UK)

PART 1: LANGUAGE
2. Dis/enabling Courtesy and Chivalry in the Middle English and Early Modern Gawain Romances and Ballads,Bonnie Millar (University of Nottingham, UK)
3. 'A Great Blemish to her Beauty': Female Facial Disfigurement in Early Modern England,Michelle Webb (University of Exeter, UK)
4. Does Talking about Disfigurement Risk Perpetuating Stigma?Jane Frances (Changing Faces, UK)

PART 2: VISIBILITY
5. Hair Loss as Facial Disfigurement in Ancient Rome?Jane Draycott (ló®