Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography

"What an ambitious and absorbing book about autobiography and the visual! This collection of provocative essays offers a range of responses to the problem of visualizations of selfhood." -- Julie Rak, Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta "The essays in this collection engage with important questions in a set of intersecting fields - autobiography studies, new materialist analyses, studies in visuality, and studies of bodies and embodiment." -- Sidonie Smith, Director, Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan

With contributions by both artists and scholars, Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography is a unique examination of visual autobiography’s involvement in the global cultural politics of health, disability, and the body.

From reality television to film, performance, and video art, autobiography is everywhere in today’s image-obsessed age. With contributions by both artists and scholars, Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography is a unique examination of visual autobiography’s involvement in the global cultural politics of health, disability, and the body. This provocative collection looks at images of selfhood and embodiment in a variety of media and with a particular focus on bodily identities and practices that challenge the norm: a pregnant man in cyberspace, a fat activist performance troupe, indigenous artists intervening in museums, transnational selves who connect disability to war, and many more.

The chapters in Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography reflect several different theoretical approaches but share a common concern with the ways in which visual culture can generate resistance, critique, and creative interventions. With contributions that investigate digital media, installation art, graphic memoir, performance, film, reality television, photography, and video art, the collection offers a wide-ranging critical account of what is clearly becoming one of the most important issues in contemporary culture.