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    Naked or Covered: A History of Dressing and Undressing Around the World

    Original price was: ₹499.00.Current price is: ₹250.00.

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    AuthorMineke Schipper
    ISBN9789386702708
    Published LanguageEnglish
    Publication Year2017
    PublisherSpeaking Tiger
    BindingPaperback with flaps
    Pages296
    Ships By2-3 days

    Description

    An African tribesman merely needs to wrap a simple string around the hips and tuck his genitalia out of sight to be correctly dressed while, at the other end of the spectrum, a devout woman is considered naked in many cultures if her head remains uncovered.

    Throughout history, different cultures and religions have developed codes to control unruly nakedness, giving rise to a variety of ideas of what it means to be dressed. Now, in a time of globalization, we are confronted by a variety of perspectives on dress: not just what to wear, but who wears it, why and how. Advertisers routinely fall back on the female nude to sell anything from cars to perfume; wearing a traditional khadi kurta vs. a Western-style three-piece suit can send a powerful political message; violent protests take place against the idea of nakednesss, yet nakedness is used as a form of protest; and contemporary interpretations of religious or cultural edicts are met with bafflement, bigotry or outright bans.

    Using an engaging mixture of anecdote and historical interpretation, Naked or Covered: A History of Dressing and Undressing Around the World brilliantly dissects our contradictory attitudes to bodily exposure and concealment through time and across cultures. Mineke Schipper’s unerringly detailed prose is complemented by aptly chosen photographs and paintings which bring the history of revealment and concealment through clothing to life.

    About the author
    Mineke Schipper is Emeritus Professor of Intercultural Literary Studies at the University of Leiden. She taught at the UniversitŽ Libre du Congo and has held visiting professorships in Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso and China. She has a Royal Order of Knighthood for 'building intercultural bridges nationally and internationally, inside and outside the academy' from The Netherlands. She continues her scholarly work at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). She is the author of several academic books, essays and novels, including Imagining Insiders: Africa and the Question of Belonging (1999) and the internationally acclaimed Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from Around the World, for which she received the Eureka Award for best non-fiction book in 2005.

    Additional information

    Author

    ISBN

    Published Language

    Publication Year

    Publisher

    Binding

    Pages

    296

    Ships By

    2-3 days