1st Edition

Performing the Penis Phalluses in 21st Century Cultures

Edited By Meredith Jones, Evelyn Callahan Copyright 2023
    176 Pages 19 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    176 Pages 19 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book will be the first collection that offers an overview and case studies around understandings and manifestations of penises and phalluses in the early twenty-first century. It examines how penises and phalluses are experienced and represented, drawing on examples from pornography, stripping, music video, film, surgery, and comedy. The penis—along with its twin the phallus—has been used to symbolise strength, fertility, and power but also bestiality, violence, and the ‘savage’. It has been worshipped, feared, and mocked. With contributing authors deploying conceptual frameworks based in philosophy, cultural studies, gender studies, affect theory, film theory, feminist theory, art theory, sociology, history, medical anthropology and media studies, this volume will appeal to a broad range of scholars and all who are interested in bodies, genitals, gender, and contemporary cultures.

    Introduction

    Meredith Jones and Evelyn Callahan

    1. The Phallus: Power and Vulnerability

    David Kreps and Caroline Ruddell

    2. The Foetus Phallus Studio

    Anna Gonzalez Suero

    3. Knowing, Visibility and A Comedic Penis

    Adam Eldridge

    4. ‘The Easy Way Out’: Vasectomies in Sociopornographic Magazines

    Jonathan A. Allan

    5. Hung Jury: Queer Verdicts of Sex Reassignment Surgery Versus Trans Men’s Surgical Journeys

    Trystan Cotton

    6. The Penis in the Medical Imagination

    Evelyn Callahan and David Griffiths

    7. Playing with Penises: Gigantic and Miniature Phallic Performances

    Meredith Jones and Kieran Sellars

    8. ‘I Do What I Know How To Do’: Performing the Penis in Key West*

    Tim Dean

    Biography

    Meredith Jones is Director of the Institute of Communities and Society at Brunel University London, UK.

    Evelyn Callahan is a Research Fellow at The Open University.