Dr. Ana Carden-Coyne
The First World War mangled faces, blew away limbs, and ruined nerves. Ten million dead, twenty million severe casualties, and eight million people with permanent disabilities - modern war inflicted pain and suffering with unsparing, mechanical efficiency. However, such horror was not the entire
story. People also rebuilt their lives, their communities, and their bodies. From the ashes of war rose beauty, eroticism, and the promise of utopia.
Ana Carden-Coyne investigates the cultures of resilience and the institutions of reconstruction in Britain, Australia, and the United
States. Immersed in efforts to heal the consequences of violence and triumph over adversity, reconstruction inspired politicians, professionals, and individuals to transform themselves and their societies.
Bodies were not to remain locked away as tortured memories. Instead, they became
the subjects of outspoken debate, the objects of rehabilitation, and commodities of desire in global industries. Governments, physicians, beauty and body therapists, monument designers and visual artists looked to classicism and modernism as the tools for rebuilding civilization and its citizens.
What better response to loss of life, limb, and mind than a body reconstructed?
Introduction
1. Reconstructing Civilization in Postwar Culture
2. Culture Shock: Trauma, Pleasure, and Visual Memory
3. Monumental Classicism: Healing the Western Body
4. The Sexual Reconstruction of Men
5. The 'Golden Age of Woman'
6. Performing the New
Civilization
Conclusion: Healing and Forgetting
Bibliography
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Dr. Ana Carden-Coyne is Co-Director at the Centre for the Cultural History of War at the University of Manchester.
