Prof Waldrop: Books/eBooks

Examines the ways in which hair has served as a signifier of class, gender, ethnicity, conformity/non-comfority, authority, and power throughout history. Countless issues and examples are explored in this volume including: hair styles of royalty; wigs worn by lawmakers and judges; ceremonial hairstyles of tribes throughout the world; Oliver Cromwell's Roundheads; hair in the counterculture (including the musical Hair); skinheads, Mohawks and punk style; the hairstyles of First Ladies; celebrity hairstyles; women shaving their heads to subvert gender and sexuality stereotyping; the entire hair-care industry; the search for a cure to baldness; and diseases and disorders related to hair. Broad topics in this book include hair arrangement/styling; care and cleansing; business and commercial aspects; laws and legal matters; trends and trendsetters; and health and science. An introductory essay explores the universal human interest in hair and hair-styling throughout history and around the world. It is followed by alphabetically arranged entries, each including sources for further reading. This work is highly relevant to the study of class, gender, popular culture, and politics. A lavish set of color and halftone illustrations completes this fun and useful title.

Bobs, beards, blondes and beyond, Hair takes us on a lavishly illustrated journey into the world of this remarkable substance and our complicated and fascinating relationship with it. Taking the key things we do to it in turn, this book captures its importance in the past and into the present- to individuals and society, for health and hygiene, in social and political challenge, in creating ideals of masculinity and womanliness, in being a vehicle for gossip, secrets and sex. Using art, film, personal diaries, newspapers, texts and images, Susan J. Vincent unearths the stories we have told about hair and why they are important. From ginger jibes in the seventeenth century to bobbed-hair suicides in the 1920s, from hippies to Roundheads, from bearded women to smooth metrosexuals, Hair shows the significance of the stuff we nurture, remove, style and tend. You will never take it for granted again.

More than 400 of the author's own drawings provide an authentic record of over 1,300 years of changing fashions in women's hairstyles and headwear in England. Finely detailed images -- rendered from vintage sources -- depict everything from wimples and crespines worn in Anglo-Saxon times to early Victorian bonnets and pillboxes of the mid-20th century.

A braidery is more than just a shop where you get your hair done: it is a spiritual space, a meeting place, and a cross-cultural intersection, and the site where the past and present are woven together and traditions come alive. Duyan James, a Liberian native with a braidery in Washington, DC, presents a colorful, fascinating, and gorgeously photographed guide to the art. Complete with stories, folklore, and traditional hair care secrets, Hairtalk provides a full sense of the history of the many braiding styles that have become a staple in American culture. Pore through 51 styles for adults and nine for children--including some with synthetic and natural extensions--and learn all of the basic braiding techniques. But most importantly, James and her 12 African braiders from all over the continent provide a compelling account of the tribal meanings and ritualistic uses of each unique look, expanding the value and significance of braiding beyond mere fashion.