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Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America

Kathleen M. Brown traces changing ideas about cleanliness from the colonial period into the nineteenth century. Bathing, clothing, laundry, bodily odors, domestic labor, race, class, and gender all shaped what Americans understood a clean body to be. By connecting intimate habits to commerce, medicine, religion, slavery, and citizenship, the book shows that hygiene was never merely private or neutral.

Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication date: 2009-09-29
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 464
ISBN: 9780300106183

Subjects

History / United States / Colonial Period Social Science / Customs & Traditions History / Social History

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Interview with the Author

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1. The Dirt on the Past — Nast Wenches, Good Wives, and Foul BodiesChecked

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2. Analyzing American Revolution — The American Revolution Didn't Free Women—It Strengthened SlaveryChecked

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