Description
Book SynopsisA multidisciplinary collection of essays exploring current scholarship on the history of human identification. Examines how techniques of identification are entangled within a wider sphere of cultural identity formation.
Trade Review“While there is now a growing literature on identification, there is no volume, as far as I know, so firmly rooted in literary studies, as compared to historical approaches. The Art of Identification makes a significant, original, and novel contribution to the literature.”
—Simon Cole,author of Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification
“In a world increasingly dominated by technological forms of human surveillance, identification, and profiling, it is ever more important to examine how such processes affect how we feel and understand ourselves and others. The exciting essays in The Art of Identification are a signal contribution to this task. The collection will fascinate humanities scholars, scientists, and AI ethicists alike.”
—Edward Higgs,author of Identifying the English: A History of Personal Identification 1500 to the Present
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Rex Ferguson, Melissa M. Littlefield, and James Pardon
Part 1: Genres of Identification
1. Charming Faces and the Problem of Identification
Matt Houlbrook
2. Identity Noir
James Pardon
3. “The Ghosts of Individual Peculiarities”: Murder and Interpretation in Dickens
Andrew Mangham
4. “A Puzzle of Character”: Francis Iles and Narratives of Criminality in the 1930s
Victoria Stewart
Part 2: The Body Captured
5. The Art of Identification: The Skeleton and Human Identity
Rebecca Gowland and Tim Thompson
6. Becoming More Biological: Ruth Ozeki and the Postgenomic Ethnoracial Novel
Patricia E. Chu
7. Identification Made Visible: Photographic Evidence and Russell Williams
Jonathan Finn
Part 3: Surveillant Technologies
8. The Face in the Biometric Passport
Liv Hausken
9. The Bourne Identification
Rex Ferguson
10. Identification and the “Intelligent City”
Dorothy Butchard
11. Jennifer Egan and the Database
Rob Lederer
Contributors
Index
