Engaging with Anthropology: A Summer Book Club!

Happy Tuesday! California State Universities Anthropology Club, has shared an exciting opportunity with us, for students to come together globally to participate in a summer book club, and wonderful chats about anthropology!

All students are welcome to join for the bi-weekly book club meetings. At the end of the programs students will have the opportunity to meet the author! For additional information please reach out via Instagram to @dhanthroclub

Sign up here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdRm1Mn_qIIymTimiGS03MAaLDwnEmy82qv7pbWIOuUF58Luw/viewform

The Book title is called: The Corseted Skeleton: A Bioarcheology of Binding by Rebecca Gibson

Information about the book:

Unpacking assumptions about corseting, Rebecca Gibson supplements narratives of corseted women from the 18th and 19th centuries with her seminal work on corset-related skeletal deformation. An undergarment that provided support and shape for centuries, the corset occupies a familiar but exotic space in modern consciousness, created by two sometimes contradictory narrative arcs: the texts that women wrote regarding their own corseting experiences and the recorded opinions of the medical community during the 19th century. Combining these texts with skeletal age data and rib and vertebrae measurements from remains at St. Bride’s parish London dating from 1700 to 1900, the author discusses corseting in terms of health and longevity, situates corseting as an everyday practice that crossed urban socio-economic boundaries, and attests to the practice as part of normal female life during the time period Gibson’s bioarcheology of binding is is the first large-scalar, multi-site bioethnography of the corseted woman.