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"Hominids have always been obsessed with representing their own bodies. The first "selfies" were prehistoric negative hand images and human stick figures, followed by stone and ceramic representations of the human figure. Thousands of years later, moving via historic art and literature to contemporary social media, the contemporary term "selfie" was self-generated. The Body, Subject & Subjected illuminates some "selfies." This collection of critical essays about the fixation on the human self addresses a multi-faceted geographic set of cultures - the Iberian Peninsula to pre-Columbian America and Hispanic America - analyzing such representations from medical, literal and metaphorical perspectives over centuries. Chapter contributions address the representation of the body itself as subject, in both visual and textual manners, and illuminate attempts at control of the environment, of perception, of behavior and of actions, by artists and authors. Other chapters address the body as subjected to circumstance, representing the body as affected by factors such as illness, injury, treatment and death. These myriad effects on the body are interpreted through the brushes of painters and the pens of authors for social and/or personal control purposes. The essays reveal critics' insights when "selfies" are examined through a focused "lens" over a breadth of cultures"-- The Body and Indigenous Control of Environment : The Fluids of Life : Blood, Water, Power and Bugs a la Tlaxcalteca / Jeanne Gillespie -- The Body and Control via Artistic Exercise : Pablo Picasso : From Physical to Mental Dissection of the Human Body / Enrique Mallen -- The Female Body and Control via Transformation : The Beauty and the Beast / Debra D. Andrist -- The Body and Caricature for Socio-Political Control : Aesthetically Resilient : Josep Bartolí Guiu's Political Cartoons in España Libre (1939-1977 NYC), a Spanish Civil War Exile Newspaper / María Montserrat Feu López -- Control of the Dysfunctional Body : Seeing With Eyes Shut : Representations of Blindness in Pablo Picasso / Enrique Mallén -- Control of the Female Body : Threats and Violence vs. Strategies / Debra D. Andrist -- Control of the "Gay" Male Body : Ravaged by Disease, AIDS in the Latin-American Literature Scenario / Jorge Chavarro -- The Body Cured by Cleansing : Washing Away the Evidence : Midwives and Ritual Cleansing in Mesoamerica and Colonial New Spain / Jeanne Gillespie -- The Body Cured by Plants : Where Have all the (Chocolate and Popcorn) Flowers Gone? : Recovering Healing Botanicals in Nahuatl Poetry / Jeanne Gillespie -- The (Spiritual) Body Cured by Alchemy : Francisco de Quevedo and His Knowledge of Alchemy / RoseMary Salum-Nemer -- The Body as Sacrifice for the Future : La Llorona: Death of a Boy, Birth of a Nation / Norma A. Mouton -- The (Dead) Body as Catharsis in Art : Death & the Mask in Pablo Picasso / Enrique Mallen -- The Transcendence of the Body : Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera : Love and Death as New-World Mosaic / Lauren M. P. Derby
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