Body Battlegrounds explores the rich and complex lives of society’s body outlaws—individuals from myriad social locations who oppose hegemonic norms, customs, and conventions about the body in context. Original research chapters (based on textual analysis, qualitative interviews, and participant observation), along with personal narratives, provide a window into the everyday lives of people rewriting the norms of embodiment in sites like schools, sporting events, and the doctor’s office. Each accessibly-written, pedagogically-oriented chapter and narrative is at once theoretically and methodologically transparent and alive with the voices of the actors at the center of inquiry.

 

Body Battlegrounds is organized as four visually-rich interrelated parts. Part I, Going Natural, celebrates the body’s natural state by refusing to, for example, shave or diet or lighten the skin. Part II, Representing Resistance, investigates creative visual and public confrontations through photography, painting and digital platforms. Part III, Creating Community, Disrupting Assumptions, examines the resistance of individuals associated with groups often misunderstood and maligned, such as Muslims or the Deaf. Finally, the research and narratives in Part IV, Transforming Institutions and Ideologies, center on transgressive acts that promote structural change, both subtle and direct.