Research Catalog

Title

Chang and Eng reconnected : the original Siamese twins in American culture / Cynthia Wu.

Author

Wu, Cynthia, 1973-

Publication

Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2012.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xiii, 203 p. : ill.; 23 cm.

Summary

"Conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker have fascinated the world since the nineteenth century. In her captivating book, Chang and Eng Reconnected, Cynthia Wu traces the 'original Siamese twins' through the terrain of American culture, showing how their inseparability underscored tensions between individuality and collectivity in the American popular imagination. Using letters, medical documents and exhibits, literature, art, film, and family lore, Wu provides a trans-historical analysis that presents the Bunkers as both a material presence and as metaphor. She also shows how the twins figure in representations of race, disability, and science in fictional narratives about nation building. As astute entrepreneurs, the twins managed their own lives; nonetheless, as Chang and Eng Reconnected shows, American culture has always viewed them through the multiple lenses of difference."--Publisher's Web site.

Uniform Title

Project Muse UPCC books.

Subject

• American literature > 19th century > History and criticism
• American literature > 20th century > History and criticism
• Asian Americans in literature
• Bunker, Chang, 1811-1874 > In literature
• Bunker, Eng, 1811-1874 > In literature
• Conjoined twins in literature
• HISTORY / United States / 19th Century
• LITERARY CRITICISM / American / Asian American
• Literature and society > United States
• Popular culture > United States
• SOCIAL SCIENCE / People with Disabilities
• Twins, Conjoined > history
• United States

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Pt. 1. Material traces in the archive -- Labor and ownership in the American South -- Solving the mystery of their union -- Strange Incursions into medical science at the Mutter Museum -- Pt. 2. Reading literature and visual cultures -- Late-nineteenth-century visions of conflict and consensus -- Asian Americans bare/bear the hyphen -- Disciplining and normalizing the woman subject in contemporary literature and film Pt. 3. Observing and participating -- Our esteemed ancestors.

ISBN

• 9781439908686 (hardback : alk. paper)
• 1439908680 (hardback : alk. paper)
• 9781439908693 (paper : alk. paper)
• 1439908699 (paper : alk. paper)
• 9781439908709 (e-book)
• 1439908702 (e-book)

LCCN

^^2012008892

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library