Summary
Earlier periods of history have seen more people with scarring to their faces from duelling injuries and infectious diseases but what stopped this leading to a greater tolerance of facial difference? Historian Emily Cock considers the case of the Puritan William Prynne and looks at a range of strategies people used to improve their looks from eye patches to buying replacement teeth from the mouths of the poor, whose low-sugar diets kept their dentures better preserved than their aristocratic neighbours. In portraits and medical histories she finds examples of the elision between beauty and morality. With techniques such as ‘Metoposcopy’, which focused on interpreting the wrinkles on your forehead and the fact that enacting the law led to deliberate cut marks being made - this Essay reflects on the difficult terrain of judging by appearance.
Emily Cock is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cardiff working on a project looking at Disfigurement in Britain and its Colonies 1600 – 1850.
You can hear her discussing her research with Fay Alberti, who works on facial transplants, in a New Thinking podcast episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast called About Face https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p080p2bc
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.
Producer: Alex Mansfield
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Can I just say? |
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| 0:08.8 | Different paces, different heights. |
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| 0:11.9 | Where you can also listen to live sports commentary. |
| 0:14.2 | It's right foot goes for goal. |
| 0:16.7 | And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories. |
| 0:21.7 | The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession. |
| 0:25.2 | And she's had to live with that. |
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| 0:35.8 | BBC Sounds, music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:39.3 | Hello, I'm Shahad Abari, and welcome to this episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast, |
| 0:45.3 | in which we'll hear an essay from one of the 2019 New Generation thinkers. |
| 0:50.3 | They are early career academics who work with BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council on a scheme that turns their research into radio. |
| 0:59.0 | I was one of the first ten people chosen for the scheme nearly ten years ago. |
| 1:04.0 | In this year's essays, you'll hear topics ranging from cleaning, clean energy, crime and punishment and archaeological views of the earth. |
| 1:12.6 | Emily Koch from the University of Cardiff is working on a project looking at disfigurement in Britain and its colonies, |
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