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FACES

Volume 67 No. 1
(SPRING 2000)

Arien Mack, Editor

 

 


 

 

Table of Contents   Notes on Contributors Ordering information

          

Editor's Note

At first glance the subject of this issue might puzzle readers. Why is this journal, which typically organizes issues on topics such as "Democracy," "The Decent Society," or even on "Hope and Despair," organizing an issue on "Faces," a subject which might be better addressed by an Art or Psychology journal? I think, however, on reflection and upon reading the articles in this issue, it will become clear why this seemed an appropriate subject.

Let me here state only a few of the reasons. First, the face is that part of us which is usually most visible and recognizable, and so in some cultures it must be masked, veiled, or transformed in a variety of ways. It is the seat of beauty and the mirror of our emotions. It is that part of us which we are most likely to alter, either by cosmetics or cosmetic surgery. Its changing images are seen as the public manifestations of the self, the character, and the soul. Ancient myths and stories portray the dangers of looking at either one's own reflection or into the face of some other (for example, God) and so we endow the face with special powers.

With all this, it is not surprising that the face has been the subject of serious scientific study, at least since Darwin. More recently, studies of patients with particular kinds of neurological damage that cause failures of face perception have provided further evidence of the modularity of mind. For example, patients with certain kinds of neurological damage lose the ability to recognize extremely familiar faces. Not surprisingly, there is also solid evidence that human infants prefer to look at face-like images in the first months of life and that monkeys are motivated by the opportunity to see their faces in a mirror. And what about those who are blind and cannot see their own or any other face, or those who have a strange kind of facial muscle paralysis that causes them to be unable to convey emotions by their facial expressions? How do these various disabilities affect the self and the view of others?

The face is also a subject that figures in poetry, literature, and, metaphorically, in our languages (to lose face, to save face, to be two-faced, etc.) Men and women treat the face differently in different cultures and at different times. It is the subject of portrait-painting and photography, and has an important place in the history of art. And so the face is an "interdisciplinary" subject--the papers in this issue demonstrate this.

Ariel Mack,
Editor

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Table of Contents
Richard Brilliant The Metonymous Face
Jonathan Cole Relations Between the Face and the Self as Revealed by Neurological Loss: The Subjective Experience of Facial Difference
Hamid Dabashi In the Absence of the Face
Wendy Doniger The Mythology of the Face-lift
Sander Gilman Proust's Nose
Elizabeth Haiken The Making of the Modern Face: Cosmetic Surgery

Georgina Kleege Wearing the Mask Inside Out
Ian S. Penton-Voak and David I. Perrett Consistency and Individual Differences in Facial Attractiveness Judgements: An Evolutionary Perspective
Signe Preuschoft Primate Faces and Facial Expressions
Alan Trachtenberg Lincoln's Smile: Ambiguities of the Face in Photography

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Notes on Contributors
(at time of publication)

The Metonymous Face
Richard Brilliant

Richard Brilliant is Anna S. Garbedian Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. His essay "Images to Light the Candle of Fame" introduces the Getty Museum’s catalog for their exhibition Nadar/Warhol: Photography and Fame (1999). His recent books include Facing the New World: Jewish Portraits in Colonial and Federal America (1997) and Portraiture (1991).
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Relations Between the Face and the Self as Revealed by Neurological Loss: The Subjective Experience of Facial Difference
Jonathan Cole

Jonathan Cole is Consultant and Senior Lecturer in Clinical Neurophysiology at Poole Hospital and Clinical Neurological Sciences, Southampton University. His research and publications have focused on the subjective experience of facial disfigurement and on motor control after sensory deafferentation. He is the author of About Face (1998).
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In the Absense of the face
Hamid Dabashi

Hamid Dabashi is Associate Professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University. Among his most recent publications is Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic (with Peter Chelkowsky, 1999).
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The Mythology of the Face-lift
Wendy Doniger

Wendy Doniger is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of History of Religions in the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her most recent publication is Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India (1999), and her book The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade is forthcoming in 2000.
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Proust's Nose
Sander L.Gilman

Sander L. Gilman is Henry R. Luce Distinguished Service Professor of the Liberal Arts in Human Biology at the University of Chicago. His recent books include Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul: Race and Psychology in the Shaping of Aesthetic Surgery (1998) and Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery (1999).
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The Making of the Modern Face: Cosmetic Surgery
Elizabeth Hailken

Elizabeth Haiken is Assistant Professor of History at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery (1997). Virtual Virility, or, Does Medicine Make the Man?" is forthcoming in Men and Masculinities (2000).
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Wearing the Mask Inside Out
Georgina Kleege

Georgina Kleege is the author of Sight Unseen (1999). Her book Writing Helen Keller is in progress.
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Consistency and Individual Differences in Facial Attractiveness Judgements: An Evolutionary Perspective
Ian S. Penton-Voak and David I. Perrett

Ian S. Penton-Voak is a lecturer in Psychology at the University of St. Andrews. He is principal author of "Female Preferences for Male Faces Change Cyclically" (Nature, 1999).

David I. Perrett is Professor of Psychology at the University of St. Andrews. He is principal author of "Effects of Sexual Dimorphism on Facial Attractiveness" (Nature, 1998).
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Primate Faces and Facial Expressions
Signe Preuschoft

Signe Preuschoft is Research Associate and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Living Links Center of the Yerkes Primate Center at Emory University. Her recent publications include "Dominanc, Egalitarianism and Stalemate" in Primate Males (Kappler, ed., 2000) and "The Social Function of ‘Smile’ and ‘Laughter’: Variations Across Primate Species and Societies" in Nonverbal Communication: Where Nature Meets Culture (Segerstrale & Molnar, eds., 1997).
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Lincoln's Smile: Ambiguities of the Face in Photography
Alan Trachtenberg

Alan Trachtenberg is Neil Grey, Jr. Professor of English and American Studies at Yale University. Among his recent essays is "Wanamaker Indians" in the Yale Review (Spring 1998), and his books include Reading American Photographs (1989) and The Incorporation of America (1982).
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