The first part of this book presents cultural studies including: Overweight Subjectivities and Resistances; Penis Envy, Aesthetic Autoplasty and Genital Reconstruction; the Pierced and Tattoed Body; Bruce Springsteen's Working-Class Masculinity in the 1980s; and Demonic Images of Food, Bodies and the Desire to Eat. The second part focuses on textual studies such as: the Repulsive and Eroticized Bodies of Djuna Barnes; the -Feminine- Body in Modern American Poetry; the Surrender of the Body in Mary Oliver and Amy Clampitt's Ecopoetry; Violence in American Opera and Tod Browning's -Freaks.-...

What exactly can we learn about America by examining its paper bills? This illuminating text answers that question by exploring the social, cultural and historical contexts of paper money. Predicated on the assumption that paper bills speak to us through the deliberate use of symbols - letters, verbal and visual elements, as well as symbols of civic values - this book examines what has been conveyed to Americans via their currency from Colonial times through the present day. Topics covered include origin, design, creative and subversive usages, and counterfeiting.