Synopses & Reviews
From a very young age we are told not to stare, and one hallmark of maturation is the ability to resist (or at least hide) our staring behavior. And yet, rarely do we master the impulse. Despite the complicated role it plays in our development, and its unique brand of visual enticement, staring has not been considered before as a suitable object for socio-cultural analysis. What is it about certain kinds of people that makes it impossible to take our eyes off them? Why are some visual stimuli irresistible? Why does staring produce so much anxiety? Drawing on examples from art, media, fashion, history and memoir, Garland-Thomson defines staring, explores the factors that motivate it, and considers the targets and the effects of the stare. A bodily inventory then enumerates how stares actually operate in daily life. A section on "Bodies" focuses on the question of size and scale as key indicators of normalcy, while certain body parts show themselves to be disproportionately arresting, as passages on "Faces" "Hands" and "Breasts" reveal. A concluding chapter on "Beholding" considers the frisson at play between starer and staree and offers an alternative way of understanding visual communication between people. Featuring over forty illustrations, Staring captures the stimulating combination of symbolic, material and emotional factors that make staring so irresistible while endeavoring to shift the usual response to staring, shame, into an engaged self-consideration. Elegant and provocative, this book advances new ways of thinking about visuality and the body that will appeal to readers who are interested in the overlap between the humanities and human behaviors.
Review
"A trailhead that offers branches back into the many fields of study from which this book draws. It also suggests connections with new ones...[An] important, challenging, and often brilliant book." --American Literary History
"So much effort is put into trying to stop staring: mothers scold children, doctors try to 'fix' bodies marked 'abnormal.' But enough of that. Garland-Thomson takes staring as the inevitability it is, and, with compelling stories and beautiful insight, tells us where we could go from here-intellectually, socially, artistically, humanely. -Alice Dreger, Professor of Clinical Medical Humanities and Bioethics, Northwestern University
"'So I stared at him . . . I felt really ill-at-ease . . . .' Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's book explains that universal feeling in ways that are comprehensible to every one of us who has felt this discomfort at one time or another. Staring is a vital book for our understanding of disability and its impact on each of us. It is a bold and path-breaking book that should be on the reading list of everyone in education, public affairs, and social policy."-Sander L. Gilman, author of Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery
"Staring: How We Look delivers on its promise to provide a comprehensive "anatomy
of staring"...Staring excels at offering a sustained analysis of how different bodies generate stares while those same bodies can transform understandings of variance." --Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies
Synopsis
Drawing on examples from art, media, fashion, history and memoir, cultural critic Rosemarie Garland-Thomson tackles a basic human interaction which has remained curiously unexplored, the human stare. In the first book of its kind, Garland-Thomson defines staring, explores the factors that motivate it, and considers the targets and the effects of the stare. While borrowing from psychology and biology to help explain why the impulse to stare is so powerful, she also enlarges and complicates these formulations with examples from the realm of imaginative culture. Featuring over forty illustrations, Staring captures the stimulating combination of symbolic, material and emotional factors that make staring so irresistible while endeavoring to shift the usual response to staring, shame, into an engaged self-consideration. Elegant and provocative, this unique study advances new ways of thinking about visuality and the body that will appeal to readers who are interested in the overlap between the humanities and human behaviors.
About the Author
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is Professor of Women's Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her fields of study are feminist theory, American literature, and disability studies. Her scholarly and professional activities are devoted to developing the field of disability studies in the humanities and in women's studies.