Transforming Bodies

At the turn of the twenty-first century, American media abound with images and narratives of bodily transformations. At the crossroads of American, cultural, literary, media, gender, queer, disability and governmentality studies, the book presents a timely intervention into critical debates on body transformations and contemporary makeover culture.

The book is certainly a refreshing read for scholars interested in current trends of American cultural and media studies and, more specifically, the sociology of gendered bodies. But the focus on intermediality and the numerous popular cultural examples hold an interest for lay audiences too . Steinhoff's book allows us a glimpse at collective fantasies of postapocalyptic reality acted out on the surface of transforming bodies. (Anna Kérchy, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, Vol. 23 (2), 2017)

Autorentext
Heike Steinhoff is Assistant Professor of American Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Her main areas of research are gender studies, theories and representations of the body, and sexuality in American culture and cultural theory. She is the author of Queer Buccaneers: (De)Constructing Boundaries in the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN Film Series.

Inhalt
PART I: BEFORE 1. Transforming Bodies: An Introduction 2. Body Thoughts: Transforming Bodies in the 'New Body Theories' PART II: TRANSFORMATIONS 3. Extreme Makeovers: Transforming Bodies in Popular Culture 4. Monstrous Makeovers: Somatechnics of Resistance in Postmodern Consumer Culture Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters 5. Troubling Subjects: Beauty, Plastic Surgery and (Non-)Normative Bodies in Cosmetic Surgical Culture FX's Nip/Tuck 6. Modifying Teens: Coming of Age in a Dystopian World of Beauty Scott Westerfeld's Uglies Series PART III: AFTER 7. Final Suture and New Before: A Conclusion