Annotated bibliography
There have been many books written on tattoos, tattoo culture and the history of tattoos. Most noticeably there has been a flurry of relatively recent anthropological and ethnographic-like publications on tattoos and the 'tattoo culture.' No doubt due to the 'mainstreaming' of tattoos over the last decade, many of these sources were published over the last two to three years. Not surprisingly, there is an immense amount of material available on line, most of which I have yet to explore. Due to the sheer volume of material on tattoos, the bibliographic list below should only be considered preliminary. Annotations are made to the sources I had time to explore; the others will be considered for my second term research project.
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Historical Sources
Awekotuka, Ngahuia Te. ‘More than skin deep: Ta Moko today.’ In, Claiming the Stones, Naming the Bones: Cultural Property and the Negotiation of National Ethnic Identity, Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bush, eds. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2002.
A short chapter written by a Maori about the history of Maori tattooing and the expropriation of the art form by Western tattoo artists. The article focuses on the practice of Ta Moko today and the role it plays in the reclamation of Maori traditional culture.
King, Michael. Moko: Maori Tattooing in the 20th Century. Wellington: Alister Taylor, 1972.
A short, older book with great black and white photo plates of tattooed Maori men and women. A good description of the chisel-tattoo method.
Mifflin, Margot. Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo. New York: Juno Books, 1997.
Billed as 'the first history of women's tattoo art,' Mifflin's book covers the history of female tattooing from the 19th century to the present. Mifflin, a popular writer (she has written for Elle, Entertainment Weekly and the New York Times), includes great photographs as she touches on gender, sexual identity and orientation and the often times overlooked role of women in tattoo culture.
Simmons, D.R.. Ta Moko: The Art of Maori Tattoo. Aukland: Reed Books, 1986.
Simmon's short work contains stunning colour plates of Maori tattoos and many 18th and 19th century drawings, depictions and accounts of Maori tattooing from a European perspective. Simmons works with museum collections of Maori artifacts.
Anthropological/Contemporary Studies Sources
Braunberger, Christine. 'Revolting Bodies: The Monster Beauty of Tattooed Women.' NWSA Journal 12/2, 2000.
Barunberger, an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, writes about how tattooed women complicate recent body theory and take great societal risks by staging an aesthetic revolution in "feminine" beauty. I have only briefly skimmed the essay, but it has great potential. Braunberger's Ph.D. dissertation, 'Stories in the Flesh: Reading the Cultural Narratives of Tattooing in America' (presently being revised as a book) also looks promising.
Caplan, Jane (ed.). Written on the Body: the Tattoo in European and American History. London: Reaktin Bools, 2000.
A volume of fourteen essays compiled by Jane Caplan, an American Professor of European History. The essays ambitiously cover tattoos spanning from the Roman Empire, through the Renaissance and Victorian England, to the 20th century and today. An key source that covers a wide variety of tattoo topics from a historical perspective, including myth, symbolism, stigma, religion, class, gender, cultural identity and change over time.
DeMello, Margo. Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.
Another key source in my research proposal for next term, DeMello's work is a recent (2000) ethnographic study of the modern American tattoo community. DeMello, who defines herself both as an insider and an outsider of the tattoo community, conducted her research in the early 1990s as an anthropology graduate student at the University of California at Davis. The bibliography is excellent for tattoo source material.
Hewitt, Kim. Mutilating the Body. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997.
Covering tattooing, eating disorders, self-cutting and even consensual sado-masochism, Hewitt's 1997 study focuses on mutilating the human body as a means of self-expression and identity. Less academic than Favazza (see below), Hewitt's is a more contemporary account of the marginalized who express their spiritual and cultural identity through blood and ink. Some promising sections on punks, gay and lesbian culture and street youth. At the time of publishing Hewitt, a writer, was pursuing a Ph.D in American Civilization.
Other Related Sources
Favazza, Armando R. and Barbara Favazza. Bodies Under Siege: Self-Mutilation in Culture and Psychiatry. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
An interesting work that historically and culturally explores self-mutilation from a cultural psychiatry perspective. Favazza, vice chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Missouri, attempts to understand why self-mutilation is a human behaviour that crosses cultural boundaries. Tattoos are only briefly discussed, but they are put in context with other forms of mutilation, such as scarification, needling and skin cutting.
Schiffmacher, Hank and Burkhard Riemschneider (compilers). 1000 Tattoos. Köln: Taschen, 1996.
1000 tattoo photographs. The source for most of the images on this website. The brief introduction details the huge amount of diversity amongst the tattoos and the tattooed.
Tattoo Analysis Methodology Sources
Gilborn, Craig. 'Pop pedagogy: looking at the Coke bottle.' In, Material Culture Studies in America, Thomas J. Schlereth, ed. (1982): 183-191.
Gilborn systematically analyzes Coca-Cola bottles and establishes a methodology for studying consumer or popular goods.
Macquet, Jacques. 'Objects as instruments, objects as signs.' In, History From Things: Essays on Material Culture, Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery, eds. (1993): 30-40.
Macquet's analysis of objects as instruments, signs, symbols and referents is one of the key methodologies employed to study the tattoo.
McCracken, Grant. Culture and Consumption. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
Both 'Clothing as language: an object lesson in the study of the expressive properties of material culture' (57-70) and 'Meaning manufacture and movement in the world of goods' (71-89) are chapters from McCracken's seminal work on culture, consumption and material goods. McCracken, an anthropologist, studies why we are preoccupied with consumer goods and the cultural contribution they make to society.
Prown, Jules. 'Mind in matter: an introduction to material culture theory and method.' Winterthur Portfolio 17, no. 1 (1982): 1-19.
One of the material culture heavyweights, Prown argues for the scholarly study of objects in order to understand the history of those not typically represented in historical literature. His methodology on object study is systematic, thorough and detailed.
Prown, Jules. 'On the 'art' in artifacts.' In, Living in a Material World: Canadian and American Approaches to Material Culture, Gerald L. Pocius, ed. St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1991.
Prown's short article on studying art as material culture. Prown concludes that art shares similarities with literature as it possesses self-conscious or imposed aesthetic qualities and is intentionally metaphorical. We must therefore look for the unconscious metaphor in order to understand meaning.
Online Resources
Hemingson, Vincent Errol et al. The Vanishing Tattoo, 2003.
Very large, very promising tattoo site with an immense list of links, including many recent academic works on tattoos. The site is styled as an 'Indiana Jones' adventure where the tattoo seekers travel around the globe searching out the tattooed. Based out of Vancouver, B.C., the site is regularly kept up to date.
Promising (but as yet unexplored) Titles:
Sanders, Clinton R. Customizing the body: the art and culture of tattooing. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.
Thompson, Mark. Leatherfolk: radical sex, people, politics, and practice. Boston: Alyson Publications, 1992
Mascis-Lees, Francis and Patricia Sharpe, eds. Tattoo, torture, mutilation, and adornment: the denaturalization of the body in culture and text. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
Siebers, Tobin, ed. The body aesthetic: from fine art to body modification. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
-image: Tattoo Guus, Maastricht, The Netherlands, date unknown (Schiffmacher 1996:555)-