Acknowledgments xxvii

SHEET I THE HISTORY AND NATURE OF TATTOOS 1

1 Tattoos and the Tattooing Arts in Perspective: An Overview and Some Preliminary Observations 3
Charles Taliaferro and Mark Odden

2 How to Read a Tattoo, and Other Perilous Quests 14
Juniper Ellis

SHEET II TATTOOS AND ART 27

3 Are Tattoos Art? 29
Nicolas Michaud

4 Fleshy Canvas: The Aesthetics of Tattoos from Feminist and Hermeneutical Perspectives 38
Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray and Tanya Rodriguez

SHEET III THE TATTOOED WOMAN 51

5 Female Tattoos and Graffiti 53
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

6 Painted Fetters: Tattooing as Feminist Liberation 65
Nancy Kang

SHEET IV PERSONAL IDENTITY 81

7 Tattoo You: Personal Identity in Ink 83
Kyle Fruh and Emily Thomas

8 Illusions of Permanence: Tattoos and the Temporary Self 96
Rachel C. Falkenstern

9 My Tattoo May Be Permanent, But My Memory of It Isn't 109
Clancy Smith

SHEET V EXPRESSIONS OF FREEDOM 121

10 Tattoos are Forever: Bodily Freedom and the (Im)possibility of Change 123
Felipe Carvalho

11 Bearing the Marks: How Tattoos Reveal Our Embodied Freedom 135
Jonathan Heaps

SHEET VI EXPERIENCES AND STORIES SURROUNDING TATTOOS 149

12 Never Merely 'There': Tattooing as a Practice of Writing and a Telling of Stories 151
Wendy Lynne Lee

13 Something Terribly Flawed: Philosophy and ‘The Illustrated Man' 165
Kevin S. Decker

SHEET VII ETHICAL CONCERNS 179

14 The Vice of the Tough Tattoo 181
Jennifer Baker

15 To Ink, or Not To Ink: Tattoos and Bioethics 193
Daniel Miori

16 Writing on the Body: The Modern Morality of the Tattoo 206
Simon Woods

SHEET VIII EASTERN AND RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES 219

17 Is a Tattoo a Sign of Impiety? 221
Adam Barkman

18 Confessions of a Tattooed Buddhist Philosopher 230
Joseph J. Lynch

19 An Atheist and a Theist Discuss a Cross Tattoo and God's Existence 242
Robert Arp

Notes on Contributors 261