From fur coats to nude paintings, and from sports to beauty contests, the body has been central to the literal and figurative fashioning of ourselves as individuals and as a nation. In this first collection on the history of the body in Canada, an interdisciplinary group of scholars explores the multiple ways the body has served as a site of contestation in Canadian history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Showcasing a variety of methodological approaches, Contesting Bodies and Nation in Canadian History includes essays on many themes that engage with the larger historical relationship between the body and nation: medicine and health, fashion and consumer culture, citizenship and work, and more. The contributors reflect on the intersections of bodies with the concept of nationhood, as well as how understandings of the body are historically contingent. The volume is capped off with a critical introductory chapter by the editors on the history of bodies and the development of the body as a category of analysis.

Patrizia Gentile is an associate professor in the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies at Carleton University.

Patrizia Gentile's profile page

Jane Nicholas is an associate professor in the Department of Sexuality, Marriage and Family Studies at St. Jerome’s University at the University of Waterloo. She is the author of The Modern Girl: Feminine Modernities, The Body, and Consumer Cul-ture in the 1920s (2015) and the co-editor, with Patrizia Gentile, of Contesting Body and Nation in Canadian History (2013).

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‘Unique collection…Readers are offered a series of thoughtful and well-researched essays ranging from the empirical to the post-structural which cover a variety of methodologies, including textual, visual, and oral.’

Canadian Historical Review vol 95:03:2014

‘Contesting Bodies is an exciting collection that explores the complex questions that flow from placing the body at the centre of analysis.’

Labour/Le Travail vol 73:2014