Description
BODY ART: TATTOOING, PIERCING, AND THEIR RITUAL MEANING
This course responds to the recent tattoo renaissance across Europe and the U.S. in which bodily inscription, piercing, scarification, cicatrization, and other bodily decorations have migrated from the margins of Western culture to the center of popular, commercial, bourgeois culture. We will excavate the meaning—art historical, cultural, historical, and psychological—of the tattoo from its beginning in the Ice Age through its development in tribal ritual, through its facile, modern translation. Some themes for discussion are: the typology of tattoos—penal, religious, patriotic, etc; gender relationships within tattoo art; the migration of the tattoo as symbols of working-class male rebellion to middle-class, female expressions of status, self-expression, and transgression; the body as canvas. Offered upon rotation.