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    Fat and the Body in the Long Nineteenth Century
    Meanings, Measures, and Representations

    Amy Shaw (Edited by), Lynn Kennedy (Edited by)

    9781487553395

    Hardback, published 31 December 2024

    288 pages
    23.5 x 15.9 x 2.3 cm, 0.52 kg

    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
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