Cultural Skin Studies

How did British people approach suntanning and skincare in the early 20th century? In a new blog post, Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey @cemathieson explores the medical and commercial histories of sun protection through literary text: thebritishacademy.ac.uk/blog/how-did-b…

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: TEXTURES IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY MATERIAL AND LITERARY CULTURES: victorianist.wordpress.com/2024/05/22/cal…

Following our successful conference in July, we are planning an edited collection on cultures of skin

And that's everything! A big thank you to everyone involved for their stimulating presentations and discussions over the past two days. We look forward to working with you all again in the near-future - keep an eye out here for updates #CulturalSkin23

Some questions so far include: How can we engage with our reflexivity toward skin? How does skin engage with affect theory or sensory studies? #CulturalSkin23

Our roundtable - thinking about what's next for skin studies - is now underway, with @nicnyf starting us off on surface readings #CulturalSkin23

Can theorists like bell hooks or Sara Ahmed help us to reconfigure the emotions behind touch systems? #CulturalSkin23

What is your reaction to (potentially) eating milk-skin? #CulturalSkin23

We're back for Panel 7 ('Sensing Skin') - starting with Caroline Pollentier's paper on 'Haptic Minds: Fictions of Excarnation in the Long 20th Century' #CulturalSkin23

The third paper is 'Affective Transmission and Haptic Contact in Middlemarch' by Sarah Licht from @Georgetown #CulturalSkin23

@TexasTech How do complexion and colour contribute to our understandings of skin? #CulturalSkin23

Next is an exploration of 'Art and the Science of Skin' in Giotto's Arena Chapel Frescoes, from Theresa Flanigan @TexasTech #CulturalSkin23

What do you make of the interrelations between the fiction of Will Self and Virginia Woolf? How does touch/lack of touch affect communication and empathy between individuals? #CulturalSkin23

The final paper before lunch is by @BohmSchnitker from @UniFAU - on taxidermy, trauma, and gendered ecologies in Kate Mosse's 'The Taxidermist's Daughter' (2014) #CulturalSkin23

Panel 6 - 'Skin as Thing' - opens with 'Sheepskin and the Law in Early Modern Drama' by Lily Freeman-Jones, from @QMUL

Our third paper on this panel is from Mae Losasso, @UniOfYork, who is presenting on 'Sensuous Surfaces in the Poetry of Barbara Guest' #CulturalSkin23

The second paper is by Liza Foley from @NCAD_Dublin - 'Tracing the Animal in Early Modern Leather Gloves'

Sheepskin also contains a residue which made it difficult to erase or alter inscriptions on parchment #CulturalSkin23

Did you know early modern vellum contracts were cut in half using unique patterns, to ensure they weren't altered or changed by either party? #CulturalSkin23