Ruth Holliday
I have been at the University of Leeds since 2002 and was made Professor in February 2008.
I have worked in a number of fields before Sociology including Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Business Studies, and, initially, Electronics so working across disciplines has been a key feature of my academic career!
My research interests are primarily located in contemporary theories of the body, especially gendered and classed bodies, and in material culture.
Most recently I have been working on two key projects - a book on kitsch and an ESRC funded project on cosmetic surgery tourism.
The project follows more than 100 patients as they travel to destinations abroad for their surgeries, charting their experiences and those of the people who facilitate their surgeries - surgeons, nurses, hospital managers, agents, translators, drivers and so on.
I have worked in a number of fields before Sociology including Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Business Studies, and, initially, Electronics so working across disciplines has been a key feature of my academic career!
My research interests are primarily located in contemporary theories of the body, especially gendered and classed bodies, and in material culture.
Most recently I have been working on two key projects - a book on kitsch and an ESRC funded project on cosmetic surgery tourism.
The project follows more than 100 patients as they travel to destinations abroad for their surgeries, charting their experiences and those of the people who facilitate their surgeries - surgeons, nurses, hospital managers, agents, translators, drivers and so on.
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Books by Ruth Holliday
Kitsch! examines how the idea of kitsch is mobilised – progressively, as bad taste, as camp and as cool – to inform notions of identity and sensibility. The figure of ‘kitsch man’ – a degenerate with politically dubious taste – looms large in the extant biography of kitsch and is here shown to be gendered, racialised and classed. Where most studies proceed from the kitsch object, this book takes the moment of aesthetic judgement as its starting point and attempts to identify the ideological work performed by the category itself, especially as kitsch enters a seemingly more casual phase of its lifecourse. The book poses the strongest challenge to those who argue that taste is democratised in contemporary culture, offering ample evidence that judgements of taste have shifted ground rather than relaxed.
Above all, the story of kitsch proposed by the authors is intended to disturb kitsch’s reputation as the source of a ready-made sensibility and politics. Kitsch has a history and not, as it has been supposed, an essence and is consequently the site of love, hate, joy, exasperation, irony, nausea and all of the twisted possibilities between.
Papers by Ruth Holliday
Kitsch! examines how the idea of kitsch is mobilised – progressively, as bad taste, as camp and as cool – to inform notions of identity and sensibility. The figure of ‘kitsch man’ – a degenerate with politically dubious taste – looms large in the extant biography of kitsch and is here shown to be gendered, racialised and classed. Where most studies proceed from the kitsch object, this book takes the moment of aesthetic judgement as its starting point and attempts to identify the ideological work performed by the category itself, especially as kitsch enters a seemingly more casual phase of its lifecourse. The book poses the strongest challenge to those who argue that taste is democratised in contemporary culture, offering ample evidence that judgements of taste have shifted ground rather than relaxed.
Above all, the story of kitsch proposed by the authors is intended to disturb kitsch’s reputation as the source of a ready-made sensibility and politics. Kitsch has a history and not, as it has been supposed, an essence and is consequently the site of love, hate, joy, exasperation, irony, nausea and all of the twisted possibilities between.
Doi: 10.1080/0966369X.2013.832655
Publication Date: 2019
Publication Name: Manchester University Press
But what are the actual experiences of such travellers? How do they navigate their choice of surgeon, clinic and destination – especially given that these destinations are mediated by ‘agents’ (medical tourism intermediaries)? And what new and unexpected socialites do medical tourists encounter as part of such ‘clinical trails’?