Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography

by Sarah Brophy, Janice Hladki (Editor)

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 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.

318 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2014

About the author

Sarah Brophy is a professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, where she also serves as the Director of the MA in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory. Her research focuses on auto/biography, contemporary literatures, critical disability studies, health humanities, and visual culture, with a particular emphasis on cultural production in North America and the British Isles.
She supervises graduate students pursuing interdisciplinary approaches to disability, embodiment, and health humanities, as well as those exploring contemporary life writing, digital media, and cultural memory. Her work has been published in a/b: Autobiography Studies, ASAP/Journal, Somatechnics, Feminist Media Studies, Cultural Critique, and LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory.
Recognized for her contributions to teaching and mentorship, she has received the McMaster Students Union Teaching Award and the President’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision. Her PhD students have gone on to hold academic positions at institutions such as Seton Hall, the University of Toronto, King’s College London, and the University of British Columbia.