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  • Reading Colonial Heads

    Author(s)
    Woodrow, Ross
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Woodrow, Ross D.
    Year published
    2011
    Metadata
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    Abstract
    This paper contradicts the view that the interest in phrenology in colonial Australia peaked in the mid-nineteenth century and faded to the distant margins of quackery by the 1870s. Instead, the material for analysis is drawn from the second half of the nineteenthcentury, demonstrating that phrenology was more pervasive than has previously been acknowledged. Also, taking Sharrona Pearl's lead, I subsume phrenology into the wider paradigm of physiognomy. (Pearl, Harvard Univ. Press, 2010) I particularly highlight the direct influence of North American phrenological texts in the transmission of physiognomical thinking ...
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    This paper contradicts the view that the interest in phrenology in colonial Australia peaked in the mid-nineteenth century and faded to the distant margins of quackery by the 1870s. Instead, the material for analysis is drawn from the second half of the nineteenthcentury, demonstrating that phrenology was more pervasive than has previously been acknowledged. Also, taking Sharrona Pearl's lead, I subsume phrenology into the wider paradigm of physiognomy. (Pearl, Harvard Univ. Press, 2010) I particularly highlight the direct influence of North American phrenological texts in the transmission of physiognomical thinking in popular illustration and photography to demonstrate that the image economy used to define racial, criminal and social types in Australia was governed by the codes of physiognomy. Even in its highly determined manifestation of phrenology, this influence reached into the twentieth century as a measure of social standing and occupational potential.
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    Conference Title
    Contact (AANZ Annual Conference 2011)
    Publisher URI
    http://aaanz.info/aaanz-home/conferences/past-conferences/conference-2011-contact/
    Subject
    Visual Cultures
    Art Theory
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/43855
    Collection
    • Conference outputs

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