Female Reproductive Body Research Articles

An Ecofeminist Politics of Chicken Ovulation: A Socio-Capitalist Model of Ability as Farmed Animal Impairment

AbstractThrough a combined ecofeminist, and critical disability philosophical analysis of the commodification of female farmed animal reproduction, the paper conceptualizes ability as a socio-capitalist construct that can carry the potential for harm. Patriarchal farmed animal capitalism relies upon the idea of naturalized ability of farmed females to be hyper-reproductive/hyper-ovulatory/hyper-lactative. This paper frames the introduced condition of hyper-ovulation in “egg” hens, or the amplification of their ability to lay through selective breeding, as reproductive impairment, and an act of violent patriarchal commodification and capitalization of female reproduction. Impairment, then, functions not just as disability, but also as ability. Focusing on our rescued chickens, the paper argues that such intentionally bred hyper-fertility manifests for individual hens in its least harmful form as chronic illness with the likelihood of everyday pain and inflammation, anxiety, and metabolic hunger; and in its most harmful form as a life-threatening condition. It then examines the subversive ecofeminist politics of using contraception for chickens in a fraught attempt to restore a closer pace of avian ovulation cycles that existed prior to their selective breeding. In allowing infertility to be restored to hen bodies, chicken contraception highlights the disappearance of intentionally introduced reproductive impairment to materialize the patriarchal-capitalist ableist construct of hens who naturally ovulate daily. Ideas of normal and natural can also thus operate in the service of ability. Ultimately, the paper positions the infertile hen as central to a fuller feminist resistance to the governance and control of the female reproductive body.

Whole body gestational donation

Whole body gestational donation offers an alternative means of gestation for prospective parents who wish to have children but cannot, or prefer not to, gestate. It seems plausible that some people would be prepared to consider donating their whole bodies for gestational purposes just as some people donate parts of their bodies for organ donation. We already know that pregnancies can be successfully carried to term in brain-dead women. There is no obvious medical reason why initiating such pregnancies would not be possible. In this paper, I explore the ethics of whole-body gestational donation. I consider a number of potential counter-arguments, including the fact that such donations are not life-saving and that they may reify the female reproductive body. I suggest if we are happy to accept organ donation in general, the issues raised by whole-body gestational donation are differences of degree rather than substantive new concerns. In addition, I identify some intriguing possibilities, including the use of male bodies–perhaps thereby circumventing some potential feminist objections.

Women and Animals: Culinary Dilemmas and Karmic Entanglements

Abstract The primary focus of this article is the gendering of Buddhist karmic culpability presented in the extra-canonical Buddhist essay, “Quan funü jiesha wen” (On exhorting women to refrain from killing). This mid-1650 work written by the Ming loyalist Chai Shaobing (1616-70) was subsequently reprinted in the Republican era Buddhist periodical press. “Quan funü jiesha wen” offers an extraordinary entry into a Buddhist moral universe in which women who kill animals are subject to various levels of karmic retribution. The bodily intimacy of such retributions is experienced in the form of complicated pregnancies, difficult childbirths, and a myriad of diseases unique to the female reproductive body. The first half of this study provides a full translation and detailed analysis of the Buddhist tropes and exemplary stories Chai employs as he sought to change women’s culinary choices. The second half of this study shifts attention to the essay’s historical context, first through a consideration of its early publication history and the seventeenth-century milieu in which it was created, and then through an examination of how the essay’s ideas on gender fit within the changing world of Republican era China.

Sexual Size Dimorphism and Female Reproductive and Fat Body Cycles of the Viviparous Chalcides ocellatus and Sphenops sepsoides (Squamata: Scincidae) from Southern Egypt

Chalcides ocellatus (Ocellated Skink) and Sphenops sepsoides (Wedge-snouted Skink) give birth and co-occur in many areas of Egypt. This study examined the intra- and interspecific morphological variables and seasonal changes in the masses of oviducts and fat bodies and reproductive traits of females of both species to evaluate the extent of their relationship. Both species were highly divergent morphologically. Females and males of Ocellated Skinks showed larger morphological variables for all measured characteristics than the corresponding sexes of Wedge-snouted Skinks. They were sexually dimorphic, with females having larger body and abdomen sizes than males. Relative head size (length and width) was significantly larger in males than females of Ocellated Skinks, unlike Wedge-snouted Skinks where females possessed wider heads. Males mature at a larger size in Ocellated Skinks than in females, but females and males of Wedge-snouted Skinks mature at comparable sizes. Based on the simultaneous occurrence of yolked ovarian follicles and ova or embryos in the oviduct, some females in both species produced two clutches per reproductive season. In Ocellated Skinks, the average number and relative mass of late-stage embryos were 4.18 (range 2–7) and 0.25 (range 0.09–0.63), respectively, and were positively and significantly associated with female body size; in Wedge-snouted Skinks, the average number and relative mass of late-stage embryos were 2.75 (range 2–6) and 0.24 (range 0.07–0.43), respectively, and were not correlated with female body size. Postbreeding, females of both species stored fat in their fat bodies. Females had a marked seasonality in reproduction (spring–summer), which was correlated with ambient temperature and day length. This seasonality simultaneously negatively impacted the fat body and positively impacted the oviduct referring to the utilization of storage material during embryonic development.

In Defense of Heavenly Mother: Her Critical Importance for Mormon Culture and Theology

In Defense of Heavenly Mother: Her Critical Importance for Mormon Culture and Theology

Stigma, sustainability, and capitals: A case study on the menstrual cup

AbstractThis paper develops theory on stigma, capitals, and the female reproductive body, explored through analysis of empirical research on the uptake of menstrual cups, a reusable menstrual technology. Conventional menstrual products are single‐use disposables increasingly made of plastic and often disposed of by flushing, adding a significant load to marine pollution. Uptake of reusable products such as cloth pads, period underwear, and menstrual cups is increasing, but so far little is known about the effects of using such products on menstruators and on menstrual organization more broadly. My empirical research studied menstrual cup use in a small cohort of undergraduates in Melbourne, using a dual diary and interview technique. “Sustainability” as a key value was primary in participants' desire to try the cup, which most then found to be more convenient than other methods. These factors contributed to increased cultural capital surrounding menstruation, to the point where the cup and its use were described as “cool”. This new status facilitated articulation of menstrual experience with partners, peers, and families, rendering users greater agency and community in what has normatively been constructed as a solitary, silenced experience. Using the cup detached users from the menstrual disposability market economy, and therefore to some extent from its stigmatizing narrative and symbolic violence. Yet the cup had a significant paradoxical effect, in that users were able to “forget” they were menstruating during the day and in organizational settings, while encountering menstrual blood more intensely when they got home, differently enclosing the female reproductive body.

Review of GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men’s Reproductive Health

Since obstetrics and gynecology emerged as one of the first medical specialties in the late nineteenth century, the female reproductive body has been a key focus of scientific knowledge production. Understandings of how women’s health impacts the health of future children have expanded beyond science and medicine into the general public, reinforcing common associations of reproductive risk and responsibility with women’s bodies. It was not until relatively recently that questions about how men’s health affects reproductive outcomes received serious attention. In her second book, sociologist Rene Almeling asks why it took so long for these questions to be taken more seriously. Following the insightful Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm (2011), GUYnecology continues an exploration of how gender shapes medicine by looking at reproductive health more broadly while focusing on men in particular. In the book, using a variety of sources, Almeling examines biomedical knowledge about men’s reproductive health, from its production to its circulation and reception. But the main subject of analysis is not the knowledge itself but rather its relative lack or absence. Almeling is especially attentive to why a specific kind of knowledge is not produced in the first place and what happens when it is not widely shared.

Long-term changes in occurrence, relative abundance, and reproductive fitness of bat species in relation to arrival of White-nose Syndrome in West Virginia, USA.

White‐nose syndrome (WNS) is a disease caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans which has resulted in the deaths of millions of bats across eastern North America. To date, hibernacula counts have been the predominant means of tracking the spread and impact of this disease on bat populations. However, an understanding of the impacts of WNS on demographic parameters outside the winter season is critical to conservation and recovery of bat populations impacted by this disease. We used long‐term monitoring data to examine WNS‐related impacts to summer populations in West Virginia, where WNS has been documented since 2009. Using capture data from 290 mist‐net sites surveyed from 2003 to 2019 on the Monongahela National Forest, we estimated temporal patterns in presence and relative abundance for each bat species. For species that exhibited a population‐level response to WNS, we investigated post‐WNS changes in adult female reproductive state and body mass. Myotis lucifugus (little brown bat), M. septentrionalis (northern long‐eared bat), and Perimyotis subflavus (tri‐colored bat) all showed significant decreases in presence and relative abundance during and following the introduction of WNS, while Eptesicus fuscus (big brown bat) and Lasiurus borealis (eastern red bat) responded positively during the WNS invasion. Probability of being reproductively active was not significantly different for any species, though a shift to earlier reproduction was estimated for E. fuscus and M. septentrionalis. For some species, body mass appeared to be influenced by the WNS invasion, but the response differed by species and reproductive state. Results suggest that continued long‐term monitoring studies, additional research into impacts of this disease on the fitness of WNS survivors, and a focus on providing optimal nonwintering habitat may be valuable strategies for assessing and promoting recovery of WNS‐affected bat populations.

Chinese Supermom: re-domesticating women in reality TV shows

ABSTRACT This study engages in feminist media scholarship, analyzing post-millennial Chinese reality shows that center on motherhood against the social backdrop of the termination of the one-child policy and an aging population. These popular shows, exemplified by Supermom, claim to garner respect and social attention for all mothers and potential mothers by spotlighting celebrity mothers’ unpaid sacrifices and hard work in performing their maternal duties. Through the lens of critical discourse analysis, this paper focuses on Supermom’s selection of celebrity mothers; the construction of a female voice via confessional-style interviews, motion graphics, voice-overs, and monologues, as well as the male presence established through interviews with the subjects’ husbands and disembodied male voice-overs. This study argues that Supermom fuels the cultural perception of mandatory motherhood in China by promoting and portraying childbearing and childrearing as the means of fulfillment for women. These motherhood-themed reality shows offer a window through which we can glimpse the various ways television is complicit in defining women’s socially acceptable life choices and shaping post-socialist concepts of motherhood and the female reproductive body.

The crust of a male: does size matter when females are fertile?

Mammalian odors are frequently sexually dimorphic, with males often exhibiting a stronger, or otherwise distinct, odor relative to females, which can be especially useful for nocturnal species with reduced use of vision. Some male bats exhibit intense odors to attract females and reproduce, presumably as a consequence of a high concentration of testosterone. This usually coincides with the fertile period of females, which can be difficult to recognize visually because female mammals rarely advertise their precise reproductive condition. Recently, a novel odorous crust was discovered on the forearms of adult male fringe-lipped bats, Trachops cirrhosus. To understand its reproductive significance, we explored potential relationships between the size of the crust and testosterone concentration, testes size, female reproductive state, ectoparasite load, and body condition. We sampled bats during the mating season and determined crust size, testosterone concentration (plasma), testes volume, precise reproductive status of females (vaginal smears), body condition (ratio of body mass and forearm length), and ectoparasite load. Crust size (0–38 mm2) was positively correlated both to testosterone concentration (0.7–36.4 ng mL−1) and to relative testes volume (6.3–349.1 mm3). During the sampling period, vaginal smears confirmed that all females were in estrus. Ectoparasite load in males was significantly lower than in females, although both sexes were in similar body condition. Our results suggest that testosterone concentration is a key factor in the exhibition of a larger crust and presumably a stronger odorous signal to estrus females during the reproductive season. Male secondary sexual characteristics are critical for attracting females for mating. Male odor, in particular, can be indispensable in nocturnal species, as visual signals may lose their effectiveness under dark conditions. The most important male hormone, testosterone, increases the development of male exclusive traits, including odors. In the Neotropics, reproductive male fringe-lipped bats exhibit large odorous crusts on their forearms. The largest male crusts correspond with the highest concentration of testosterone, a relationship we find in the mating season, when vaginal smears confirm females are fertile. We also show that males with crusts have low ectoparasite loads. Our results suggest that the male crust could potentially reveal critical information. Our research highlights the significance of testosterone in the expression of male exclusive traits.

Unexpected Organs: The Futurist Body and Its Maternal Parts

In Mafarka il futurista, F.T. Marinetti creates his new Futurist body by obscuring the role of the maternal function. By considering the specific aggression against what Marinetti codes as maternal, I offer a new way of thinking about the gender dynamics of the novel and Futurism’s relation to the reproductive female body. I suggest that the maternal function—as the ability to give life—is a necessary capability that the Futurist must acquire. However, as the protagonist approximates maternal reproductivity, the female body takes on Futurist properties, namely virility, pleasure in the risk of death, and the capacity for physical violence. A hypersexualized female body acts as a decoy to obscure the presence of female reproductivity and its potential to undermine Marinetti’s Futurist project. A closer look at Marinetti’s confusion of the reproductive and digestive systems reveals the Futurist’s dependency on an unacknowledged maternal technology of reproduction.

A qualitative exploration of the sexual and reproductive health knowledge of adolescent mothers from indigenous populations in Ratanak Kiri Province, Cambodia.

Adolescents from indigenous populations in Ratanak Kiri Province in Cambodia experience worse sexual and reproductive health (SRH) outcomes when compared to their urban counterparts. However, few qualitative studies have been conducted to identify factors that may explain the poor SRH outcomes experienced by this population group. The socioecological model was used as the analytical lens to explore the SRH knowledge and sources of SRH information of adolescent mothers (aged 15-19 years) from indigenous populations in north-eastern Cambodia. Adolescent mothers from the Tompoun and Jarai indigenous population groups (n=22) were purposively recruited from seven villages in two districts of Ratanak Kiri Province. All adolescent mothers engaged in a combined body mapping exercise and semi-structured interview; this approach was considered the most appropriate qualitative data collection method to use in this context as it reduced language, cultural and social barriers that have previously restricted qualitative exploration of sensitive issues among this population group. The body maps and semi-structured interview transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis. Adolescent mothers demonstrated limited SRH knowledge including that pertaining to the anatomy of the female reproductive body, the physiology of human reproduction, fertility and pregnancy. Adolescents' primary source of SRH information was interaction with female family members and friends within their community. Adolescents' limited SRH knowledge was influenced by factors on individual (eg educational attainment, child marriage), relationship (eg social interaction with female family members and friends), community (eg access to educational and healthcare services) and societal (eg barriers to accessing national SRH programs and initiatives) levels. The%u202Ffindings support the need for SRH education in the primary and secondary school curriculum. In 2018 the Cambodia Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports introduced a Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) program into the government primary and secondary school curriculum. The CSE, which is delivered in the Khmer language, provides Cambodian youth with an avenue to access accurate SRH information that will aid their SRH decision-making. However, indigenous girls face numerous social, cultural, economic and language barriers that restrict or prevent their access to formal education. Therefore, additional SRH materials and resources that are culturally and linguistically appropriate need to be developed for indigenous students attending primary and secondary schools in Ratanak Kiri Province and for young people who have ceased formal education. Educating village chiefs to deliver non-formal, community-based education programs is proposed as a means of increasing SRH knowledge and reducing health inequalities faced by this population group while ensuring that accurate information is delivered in a culturally appropriate manner.

Baicalein, a flavonoid, causes prolonged estrus and suppressed fertility output upon prenatal exposure in female mice.

Baicalein (BC), a phytoestrogen of the flavonoid family shows beneficiary and adverse effects. Effect of BC on reproduction is still not understood. Reproductive toxic effects on female mice were tested in this study. Inseminated Wistar mice were divided into four groups and administered IP with 30, 60, and 90 mg/Kg body weight of BC on gestation days 11, 13, 15, and 17, and controls treated with DMSO. They were allowed to deliver pups and offspring were separated gender-wise on day 21. The stages of the estrus cycle and its lengthlengths of three successive cycles were measured from day 38 of young females. The mature female offspring of at 60 days age havewere cohabited with control males and the female reproductive endpoints and body weights of dams were measured. The BC exposure increased the length of the estrus cycle, especially the metestrus and diestrus phases were prolonged among other phases of the estrus cycle. Recorded significant reduction in the body weights (P<0.05) of prenatally BC exposed dams on 8 and 18 days of gestation. A significant increase in the conception time (P<0.0001), pre (53.42%) and post (8.82%) implantation loss, and resorptions (P=0.055), whereas a significant decrease in the number of implantations and live fetuses (P<0.0001) were found in BC exposed dams in a dose-dependent manner. Prenatal BC exposure prolonged the estrus cycle due to the augmented length of metestrus and diestrus phase, and is reportingreported for the first time. Female fertility output in mice is affected severely by prenatal BC exposure.

Narrating Pregnancy and Childbirth: Infanticide and the Dramatization of Reproductive Knowledge

In early modern England, infanticide was a crime overwhelmingly associated with women. Both popular texts and legal records depict women accused of infanticide as mothers acting against nature. These figures, however, do not often appear in the period’s drama. Instead, early modern drama includes fictionalized mothers who kill their children beyond infancy and into adulthood. By eschewing portrayals of neonaticide and the trials associated with it, the drama highlights a dependency upon female characters’ verbal narratives of the reproductive body that reinforces pregnancy’s unstable epistemology. I argue that the flexibility of this epistemology allows women, whether female characters in drama or historical women on trial, to distance themselves from the crime of infanticide by reconstructing narratives of both pregnancy and childbirth. Sharing rhetorical devices with the testimonies of women accused of infanticide, dramatic mothers such as Videna in The Tragedie of Gorboduc and Brunhalt in Thierry and Theodoret linguistically sever the biological ties between mother and child, thus disrupting conventional portrayals of reproduction. These parallel strategies position the reproductive female body as a site of resistance to the legal mechanisms designed to interpret it.

The Experimental Conception Hospital: Dating Pregnancy and the Gothic Imagination.

The Experimental Conception Hospital is a fictional laboratory described in a note by Robert Lyall on the medical evidence given in the Gardner Peerage dispute (1825–26). This fantasy institution would discover the natural length of human gestation and ascertain from when and what to date conception, calculations which eluded the House of Lords Peerage Committee which heard the case. This article introduces the Gardner case and Lyall’s writing about it, focusing on the Gothicism which emerges particularly in relation to the perceived secrecy of the female reproductive body. By considering Lyall’s Experimental Conception Hospital alongside three other technologies—the Panopticon, the hot air balloon and anatomical drawings of the gravid uterus—this article discovers the anachronistic persistence of supposedly out-dated modes of thoughts around female sexuality and reproductive biology in an apparently hyper-modern moment.

Remembering Pregnancy Loss in Camille Laurens’s Philippe

Writings that capture a woman’s perspective of perinatal death are remarkably rare in French literature. This paper explores the narrative techniques and formal experimentation that Camille Laurens’s Philippe employs to give voice to both mother and child. It beautifully chronicles the traumatic event and aftermath, disentangling the female reproductive body from the medical institution’s web of blame and valuing its experience, while creating a narrative of life for Philippe, an enfant sans vie. Ultimately, the narrator’s painstaking compilation of traces of her son begins to delicately articulate the loss experienced by the mourning mother/writer, counteracting the silence surrounding perinatal death.

Cyclic E2 and P4 on Alzheimer’s Disease Pathways

In recent years, Alzheimer’s disease has been clearly linked to the degradation of microtubules and microtubule-associated tau (τ) and β-amyloid (βA) proteins. Through an examination and evaluation of current literature, we assess the possible effects of the steroid hormones on τ hyperphosphorylation and the regulation of βA proteins and their influence on Alzheimer’s dementia and memory loss. We present a mechanism by which Alzheimer’s cases may be reduced or perhaps even prevented through the use of non-synthetic, steroid hormones prescribed in a cyclic dosing schedule that mimics the rhythmic, escalating and descending production normally observed in a reproductive female body. Given the ability of estrogen to prevent τ hyperphosphorylation and increase metabolism of the βA precursor protein, we propose the possibility of controlling both protein cycles through the exogenous application of estrogen and progesterone may help those patients with active disease as well as prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Writing the Pregnant Body in Marie Darrieussecq’s Le Pays (2005)

In the early 1990s, a number of commercially and critically successful French writers began examining the lived experiences of the female reproductive body, tapping them for both creative inspiration and critical reflection, while expressing them through the voice of the reproductive subject. Previously, narratives of reproduction recounted from the first-person narrator’s perspective had been few in French fiction and works centrally concerned with these experiences were rare. This paper first identifies some key works within this ever-growing corpus that I refer to as “hysterographies” (writings of the womb). With this term, I unite first-person narratives that capture women’s perceptions of their bodies during reproductive or sterile experiences as they innovate, reflect on their writing, and engage with the contemporary medical establishment. The authors engaging in such works include quite recognizable names from Marie Redonnet, Christine Angot, and Louise Lambrichs to Justine Levy, Marie NDiaye, and Annie Ernaux—just to name a few. Next, this paper takes a closer look at the narrative techniques and formal experimentation that one hysterography, Marie Darrieussecq’s Le Pays (2005), employs to articulate the experiences of the narrator’s shifting relationship to her pregnant body. Structurally, the narrative is recounted from two alternating perspectives—one in the third-person observing the protagonist’s life (external focalization), and the other in first-person interior monologue (internal focalization) visually illustrated with boldface print. The two layers of this work intertwine and diverge exposing a variety of relationships between the body and the world in which it lives. Darrieussecq uses the consistent alternation of these points of view, combined with an innovative fusion of genres highlighting sounds (poetic couplets, transcribed music, onomatopoeia), to communicate the experience of pregnancy. Just as a sonogram reveals a fetus, the two perspectives project sounds that chart both an inner and outer geography of the pregnant body, while exploring its experiences and (pro)creative possibilities.

The Gamble of Reproduction: Conceiving Ada’s Queer Temporalities

This paper will consider the relationship between the body, reproduction, and feminist history in Lynn Hershman Leeson's 1997 film Conceiving Ada. The film focuses on contemporary computer scientist Emmy's attempt to save Ada, Countess of Lovelace, from being forgotten from history. The main threat to both Ada and Emmy's work is their respective pregnancies and thus the film at first seems to represent the female body's biological reproduction as antagonistic to the (desired) reproduction of feminist history. In a move that resonates with cyberfeminist theory, it is computer technology that enables Emmy to perfectly reproduce Ada's memories in the present. However, despite this seeming turn to digital reproduction, I argue that the film resists turning away from the female reproductive body. Instead, through Emmy's work to recover Ada, the film explores the pregnant body as a queer transmitter of history. Through the metaphor of 'gambling', the film explores the uneven temporalities of genetic inheritance, considering how inheritance is always tied to the past yet never entirely determined by this past. The 'gamble of reproduction' pushes queer temporality theory in its representation of the pregnant body while also offering a model of reproduction which is neither a barrier to feminist history nor a guarantee that the past can be copied perfectly into the future.

Staging the Blazon in Early Modern English Theatre ed. by Deborah Uman and Sara Morrison (review)

Reviewed by: Staging the Blazon in Early Modern English Theatreed. by Deborah Uman and Sara Morrison Frank Swannack Uman, Deborah and Sara Morrison, eds, Staging the Blazon in Early Modern English Theatre( Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama), Farnham, Ashgate, 2013; hardback; pp. 232; R.R.P. £55.00; ISBN 9781409449003. Editors Deborah Uman and Sara Morrison claim the essays collected in this volume ‘complicate what has become a standard reading of the blazon’ (p. 3). However, the blazonic dismembering of the female body is a somewhat over-familiar trope in early modern studies. Perhaps in recognition of the difficulty of providing fresh insights into the subject, the editors admit that the anthology is indebted to the critical work of Nancy Vickers and Jonathan Sawday. The essays also draw heavily upon Lynn Enterline’s The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare(Cambridge University Press, 2000). Grant Williams’s essay uses Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theories and early modern notions of lovesickness to interesting effect. Unfortunately they lack clarification, and the essay seems rushed. A far more accomplished piece is Katherine R. Kellett’s analysis of the underappreciated female ghosts in the complaint poems of the 1590s. She finds an affinity with these female ghosts in Hermione from The Winter’s Tale. Hermione’s uncertain state between living and dead allows Kellett to explore the blazon through an incorporeal body. Elizabeth Williamson examines courtly love in Two Gentlemen of Verona. The confusion of gendered identities and bodies caused by a boy actor playing Julia finds its expression with a sympathetic audience. Lisa S. Starks-Estes investigates the blazon being staged literally in Titus Andronicus. She argues that [End Page 257]Shakespeare uses ‘a fresh, new, innovative Ovid’ to reinvent the Petrarchan sonnet (p. 54). Her reading of Lavinia being played by a boy actor and the conceit’s resonance with Ovid’s Metamorphosesis fascinating. Sara Morrison finds a refreshing change in the use of blazonic language by female characters in Measure for Measureand The Duchess of Malfi. In particular, she gives details of how Petrarchan conventions are used to depict scars on the female body that represent pain on stage. Patricia Marchesi’s captivating essay examines how theatrical props and human limbs become interchangeable in the B-text of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. The fact that traitors’ dismembered limbs were displayed in Elizabethan society finds an intriguing correlation with the way Faustus’s body is easily pulled apart. Added to this is Marchesi’s insight that Faustus is comparable to the objectified beloved of a Petrarchan sonnet. Ariane M. Balizet’s subject is cuckoldry in Arden of Favershamand A Woman Killed with Kindness. More specifically, she looks at ‘blazons ofmen bymen’ (p. 98). Balizet argues that the dehumanising effect of the cuckold’s horns erodes the husband’s role as the head of the household. Thomas P. Anderson explores Julie Taymor’s Titus(1999), a film adaptation of Titus Andronicus. He argues that Lavinia’s fragmented body in the film ‘offers a form of corporeal feminism’ (p. 111). The most fascinating section of Anderson’s essay is his exploration of the artificial limbs and how Lavinia attempts to make her dismembered body whole again. Joseph M. Ortiz investigates other uses for the blazon apart from erotic desire. In Shakespeare’s history plays, he finds faces being scrutinised for signs of royal legitimacy. His impressive close reading of Henry Vfinds an allusion to printed history books. Lisa Dickson examines scenes of fragmented and dismembered bodies and texts in The War of the Rosesand The Plantagenets. Erin E. Kelly argues that The Rebellion of Naplesshould be regarded as a play rather than a play-pamphlet. Its graphic depictions of violence imitate the falling apart of Charles I’s body politic. The ending to Kelly’s essay is the most enigmatic and chilling in the anthology. The problems of blazoning the female reproductive body in ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whoreare investigated by Sara D. Luttfring. In particular, she examines Giovanni’s anxieties over his sister’s sinful womb. Nancy Simpson-Younger explores identity in the sleeping or dead characters...