Wondering, Webbing, and Wiggling

These three Ws seem to flow in and out of each other for me. As I proceed through the research process, I’m constantly thinking about the topic, what I’m seeing in the books and articles (even if I’m only skimming and sampling), re-evaluating, looking for directions and patterns. I'm also contemplating what form the final product should take. It’s hard to articulate the steps individually at all because I seem to do them all at once, all the time. This phase seems to correspond well to Callison’s Exploration phase, but shades into Assimilation as well (p. 25), since I do evaluate and reject books and articles as I come upon them.

To be more concrete, here’s what I’ve been doing over the past week and a half.

I searched the online catalog for tattoo as a keyword in the Monroe County Public Library (website) and found a few books and a video listed that appeared to be available. I noticed that body art is another subject heading that applies, and I searched that as well. Then I went over there and picked them up, browsing in the general area (391.65) at the same time. I also checked the new nonfiction area and located a book I hadn’t noticed in the catalog. I picked up a video entitled Body Art as well—it’s overdue now and I still haven’t watched it. (Darn. Maybe later. I have to bring it back tomorrow before the fines pile up too much.) I looked at a lot of pictures of people with tattoos in the books I checked out. I did a Google image search for turtle tattoos--and found lots and lots of beautiful tattoos and tattoo art sites. My favorite image so far is called plumeria turtle, for the flower (plumeria) inside of the sea turtle. I like the colors and the design.

I bought a similar car sticker in Hawaii….it’s where I got the idea that a turtle might the perfect image for a tattoo for me.

I did an IUCAT search about a week or so ago. Tattoo as keyword anywhere brought up 106 titles—too many, so I selected to look at the nine titles in GN Anthropology section.

Here are few that caught my eye:

Steve Gilbert, Tattoo History. It’s available in the UGL Core Collection. I finally picked it up this week, too. History is always good, right?

Margot Mifflin, Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo. The publication date is listed as ?2001, and the book is on order. Sounds interesting. There’s a nice list of subject headings here, too. Tattooing. Body Art. Body, human—symbolic aspects.

Nicholas Thomas. (2005). Tattoo: Bodies, Art, and Exchange in the Pacific and the West. It’s in the Folklore section. Good. I love going up to the folklore section. It still has a card catalog….how cool is that?

The Fine Arts library has a book called The Sketchbook: 80 Unique Designs by the World’s Finest Tattoo Artists. I’ve never been to the Fine Arts library! Maybe I’ll go.

Victoria Pitts, In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification. NY, 2003. Available in the UGL Core Collection.

Jane Caplan, Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History. London, 2000. It’s checked out at Fine Arts and the Wells (main) library, but due on 2/16, so I’ll recall it.

Jean-Chris Miller, The Body Art Book: A Complete Illustrated Guide to Tattoos, Piercings, and Other Body Modifications. NY, 1997. UGL Core Collection. I got this book at the public library, and it’s a book of practical advice on what to look for and think about when you’re considering getting a tattoo or other body modification. The tone is somewhat informal, but it seems to have good, common sense advice. Great pictures, too.

Rufus C. Camphausen. Return of the Tribal: A Celebration of Body Adornment: Piercing, Tattooing, Scarification, Body Painting. Rochester, VT, 1997. In the Folklore Collection. A must-see.

Wilfrid Dyson Hambly. The history of tattooing and its significance, with some account of other forms of corporal marking. 1886. Detroit: Gale Research, 1974. Wow! An old book. Can’t wait to have a peek at this one. It’s in Folklore.

Then I went to EBSCOhost and searched a bunch of databases simultaneously. Academic Search Premiere, Alt Health Watch, Medline, ERIC, MasterFile Premiere, Gender Studies, Health Source Consumer Edition, Newspaper Source, Primary Search. I searched on tattoo OR tattoos OR tattooing. I wanted to see if I’d find some health advice/warnings about tattooing.

One of the first articles that came up was a bit strange…. The title is “Second Thoughts” and it’s about a 70-something year old man who had Do Not Resuscitate tattooed on this chest. He was a widower and was having heart trouble. Then he got his heart problems fixed and met someone else, so he has changed his mind. I think this is an extreme case of changing your mind. It was published in 2005 in a British medical journal.

I also found an article about a course being taught at a university. The reading list sounds good:

John W. Burton. (2001). Culture and the Human Body: An Anthropological Perspective.
[IU has it in the Folklore section—must see!!)

Also: Victoria Pitts, In the Flesh; and Rush, Spiritual Tattoo. I've also seen these titles in IUCAT.

That these books are on a college-level course reading lists validates them as good resources. I’ll definitely look at them (and I ended up checking both out of the library).

I sent a few articles to my email address as well.

Let’s see. Next notes are for February 7. After my Collection Development class, I quickly grabbed 2 books from the UGL Core Collection and then headed over to the research collections tower and the Folklore section. The library needs to get new signage by the elevators. I know Folklore is on the 7^th floor, which I confirmed once I got ON the elevator, but what about the masses who spend little time roving the stacks? No wonder the undergrads find the research collections daunting. I’m sure there used to be a sign up listing floors for each LC classification as well as floors for special collections. No matter. I’ve been to the Folklore Collection before.

The stacks are great--that silent, dusty smell of old paper and heavy thinking. I browsed in a couple of areas. Pulled a pile of books and headed to a quiet corner to look them over and decide which ones to check out.

Culture and the Human Body looks very interesting. Great pictures. Anthropological perspective. Should be interesting. And it’s a skinny paperbook, another plus (since I have to haul it home in my backpack on my bike!).

Oops. What’s this? Body Invaders: Panic Sex in America. Must’ve picked this up by mistake. It’s an edited collection. There’s a section of articles called Body Watching….nope. It’s all postmodern deconstructive stuff written in that trendy disjointed style. Very French. Largely impenetrable but fun and funny on a certain level. No index to the book either. That’s French, too.

Another sort of strange edited collection: Body Parts: Critical Explorations in Corporeality. This book has a beautiful/strange/awesome/scary cover photo/art. Is it a tattooed body or a patterned cloth draping a body….or both? I can’t decide. Here’s an article title—warning, it’s a bit vulgar: “Hairy Heine, or the Braiding of Gender and Ethnic Difference.” And another: “Bums in the Time of Cholera: Sex, Sodomy, and Representation of the Fundament.” Nope, I won’t be needing this book. Hairy Heine…jeez.

Now here’s an old looking book. Tattooed Women and their Mates. Edited by Hal Zucker. World Folklore Series, No. 1. copyright 1955. Fabulous quotations….oh, this is so dated. Line drawings COVER the margins. Let's peek inside:

Factoid alert: “Taboo and tattoo are the only Polynesian words in the English language” (p. 7). More: Since “tattooing is connected with sex and sex practices . . . we politely disregard it. It is the same prudish taste which disregards sex” (p. 8). “Most tattooed women are prostitutes. (Not in the primitive societies but in the Western world)” (p. 10). Wow. I did not know that.

I found the old ([1925] 1974) Hambly book I had seen indexed in the catalog, too, but it did not look promising at all. Just old.

Today (Feb. 9^th) I did some more database searching and selected some articles with health related information about tattoos. I emailed the citations to myself and I’ll look them over.

Some literal watching now….as I view the videotape, Body Art.

References

Callison, Daniel. (2003). Key Words, Concepts, and Methods for Information Age Instruction: A Guide to Teaching Information Inquiry. Baltimore, Maryland: LMS Associates.