Somatic Styles of the Early Middle Ages

‘Somatic Styles’ examines how classical modes of gender played significant roles in carving out competitive arenas between clerical and lay elites, c.600–900 CE. The paper explores the hermeneutical obstacles standing between the contemporary theorist of gender and the complex nature of the early medieval texts under scrutiny. The analysis reconstructs classicising techniques of gender deployed by early medieval churchmen, and it does so in a way that both challenges the stranglehold of the ‘one‐sex’ model on pre‐modern understandings of gender and heals the ‘rupture’ between the ‘Ancient’ and the ‘Dark Age’. Finally, the essay maps early medieval somatic and gendered styles onto an architectural space where lay and consecrated bodies met – a ninth‐century monastic basilica.     

Dirty dancing: the (non)fluid embodied geographies of a queer nightclub in Tel Aviv

This paper examines the (non)fluid embodied geographies of a queer nightclub in Tel Aviv, Israel. The nightclub is considered to be a space of sexual liberation and hosted the Friendly Freedom Friday party. Yet, the space of the nightclub is also divided by gender and sexuality. We draw on individual in-depth interviews and participant observations to examine the tensions that arise from, and between, gay men, transwomen and club spaces. A number of paradoxes are present in the club. We argue that the fluidity of subjectivity—espoused by queer theorists—evaporates when confronted with the materiality of actual sweating bodies. We are interested in the visceral geographies of how and where sweat, and other body fluids, becomes matter out of place or ‘dirty.’ Three points structure our discussion. First, we outline the theoretical debates about body fluids and fluid subjectivities. Second, we examine gay men's and transwomen's bodily preparations that occur prior to attending the nightclub. The spatial, gendered and sexed dimensions of participants’ subjectivities are embedded in desires to attend the club. Finally, we argue that the spaces gay, partially clothed and sweating male bodies occupy are distinct from, and in opposition to, transwomen's clothed and non-sweating bodies.     

Going Places: The Historical Archaeology of Travel and Tourism

This paper briefly introduces the topics of tourism, consumption, and heritage management considered in this special issue. Contributors to the special issue focus on tourism within nineteenth- and twentieth-century America and its connections to industrial capitalism and the creation of a culture of consumption. These issues are addressed in case studies of tourist sites, including archaeological sites.     

A visceral approach: cooking 'at home' with migrant women in Hamilton, New Zealand

People's visceral experiences of food – the tastes, textures and aromas – can tell us a great deal about their emotional and affective relations with place. Questions of bodies and embodiment are increasingly becoming a focus for geographers and migration scholars. In this article we extend some of this work by examining how the visceral can shape (and be shaped by) a range of socio-political relations. We concentrate on food and eating as a central political issue and illustrate how a visceral approach can push understandings of migrants' experiences. We focus on a group of 11 migrant women from South Africa, Singapore, Korea, Iraq, Thailand, Hong Kong, Somalia, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and India in their 'new home' in Hamilton, New Zealand. Each of the women prepared and cooked for us a dish that was significant to them in some way. These migrant women are comfortable in their domestic spaces and largely experience cooking not as a burden but as an important way of staying viscerally connected with their 'old home'. Creating a domestic space where the body feels 'at home' can help resituate and reconstitute the diasporic subject. This kind of visceral approach is useful for informing the development of social policy.