© Columbia University Press
Dissenting Bodies: Corporealities in Early New England
November, 2009
Cloth, 296 pages, 9 halftones
ISBN: 978-0-231-13946-5
$45.00
/ £31.00
"A fine contribution to a corporeal history of American religion. " — Robert Fuller, Journal of Church History
"[An] important new study." — Adrian Chastain Weimer, Religion
"To get a handle on the types of bodies that inhabited the challenging seventeenth-century New England landscape, Martha L. Finch combs a wide variety of literature (scientific theory, travel narratives, court records, diaries, letters, and histories) to tease out the many ways that Puritan theology was inscribed onto bodies. The result is a provocative and interdisciplinary work that will captivate a large reading audience. I recommend it with enthusiasm." — Amy DeRogatis, Michigan State University, and author of Moral Geography
"Martha L. Finch's interest in the humanity of her subjects is always paramount. She wears her theoretical sophistication lightly; it never overpowers or detracts from her almost relentless quest to imagine the lives of subjects as fully and accurately as possible. I will not be alone in considering this work a significant contribution to American religious history." — Amanda Porterfield, Florida State University
"Dissenting Bodies is a provocative new study of how people in the seventeenth-century Plymouth Colony—Indians and colonists, pastors and parishioners—inhabited several corporealities at once. Drawing upon a wide variety of historical sources, Martha L. Finch effectively demonstrates the delicate interplay of bodies and beliefs. She argues that the human figure was both emblem and commodity, and that such religious practices as sacraments, meetinghouse design, disease, and death were materialized through bodily referents. Dissenting Bodies itself embodies revelation with every turn of the page. This is a daring yet totally convincing book." — Robert St. George, University of Pennsylvania
"We are close now to knowing as much about New England bodies as we once did New England minds and souls. Dissenting Bodies represents a significant stride along that path to a fully corporeal history of early American religion. Through her focus on the Plymouth Colony, Finch is able to explore the Calvinist theological framing of the body alongside the lived practices of embodiment within a particular English separatist community. The fabric of godliness for all its plainness becomes, in Finch's hands, sumptuous material." — Leigh Eric Schmidt, Harvard University