The Story of Our Teeth: A Cultural History
Trips to the dentist are as predictable as they are unpleasant, but we rarely reflect on the impact of dentistry on domains of social knowledge and action, nor on how our teeth shape who we are as subjects. In the academic history of science and medicine, dentistry has received short shrift. This mini-course shines new light on this ignored topic and its oft-maligned professions, exploring representations and metaphors of teeth in literature, mythology, and film, as well as reflecting on the history of dentistry as a specialized body of knowledge. How has oral pain influenced art? How did the mouth become a separate part of the body? Why is dental insurance typically separate from health insurance? How do ways of caring for teeth maintain social inequality? We will explore these and other questions over the course of six two-hour classes.
The course will meet on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10am-12:30pm for two weeks (January 14-25) in Harvard Science Center 252. You may sign up here.
The draft syllabus below is a live document. It will be edited and changed as the course changes.
Sowing the Dragon’s Teeth: Mouths, Myths, and Folklore (Monday, 1/14)
- Screening: “Aliens,” dir. James Cameron, 1986, selections.
- “Cadmus and the dragon’s teeth,” James Davison.
- Tad Tuleja, “The Tooth Fairy: Perspectives on Money and Magic” in The Good People: New Fairylore Essays, pp. 407-421.
- Valeria Luiselli, The Story of My Teeth (Coffee House Press, 2015), "Book II: The Hyperbolics."
The Philosopher’s Toothache: Literature, Philosophy, and Teeth (Wednesday, 1/16)
- William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-1599).
- Robert Burns, “Address To The Toothache” (1786).
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, “II: Notes For Lectures On “Private Experience” And “Sense Data”,” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Jul., 1968), pp. 275-320.
- Colin Jones, The Smile Revolution In Eighteenth Century Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), "3. Cometh the Dentist."
Unexpected Teeth and Dental Terrors (Friday, 1/18)
- Screening: “Teeth,” dir. Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2007.
- Verrier Elwin, “The Vagina Dentata Legend,” Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, Volume 19, Issue 3-4, June 1943, pp. 439-453.
- Barbara Creed, “Medusa’s Head: The Vagina Dentata and Freudian Theory,” in The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 1993), selection.
- Becky Little, “The Bloody Truth About Vampires,” National Geographic, 2016.
Teeth-pullers and -breakers: The Invention of the Dental Subject (Monday, 1/21 or Tuesday, 1/22)
- Screening: “Little Shop of Horrors,” dir. Frank Oz, 1986.
- Colin Jones, The Smile Revolution In Eighteenth Century Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), "4. The Making of a Revolution."
- James Anderson Taylor, “Architects of American Dentistry as a Separate Profession—Early Part of the Nineteenth Century,” in History of Dentistry (1922).
- Clayton Carlyle Tarr, “Long in the Tooth: Dental Degeneracy and the Savage Mouth,” Gothic Studies, Volume 19, Number 1, May 2017, pp. 113-136. Supplementary:
- Shōkichi Oda, "Laughter and the Traditional Japanese Smile" in Understanding Humor in Japan, ed. Jessica Milner Davis (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006).
Technodental: Contemporary Practice and the Pains of Being a Dentist (Wednesday, 1/23)
- Screening: "A Serious Man," dirs. Coen Brothers, 2009.
- Sarah Nettleton, “Protecting a vulnerable margin: towards an analysis of how the mouth came to be separated from the body,” Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 10, Issue 2, June 1988, pp. 156-169.
- CLZ Vieira & B. Caramelli, “The history of dentistry and medicine relationship: could the mouth finally return to the body?,” Oral Disease, Volume 15, Issue 8, November 2009, pp. 538-546.
- TM Schulein, “The era of high speed development in dentistry,” Journal of the History of Dentistry, November 2002, 50.3, pp. 131-137.
- H. L. Myers & L. B. Myers, “'It's difficult being a dentist': stress and health in the general dental practitioner,” British Dental Journal, Volume 197, 2004, pp. 89-93. Supplementary:
- Steven Connor, "Edison's Teeth: Touching Hearing" in Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening, and Modernity (New York: Berg, 2004).
- I. A. Pretty & D. Sweet, “A look at forensic dentistry – Part 1: The role of teeth in the determination of human identity,” British Dental Journal, Volume 190, pp. 359–366 (14 April 2001).
Beautiful Teeth, Poor Teeth, Criminal Teeth (Friday, 1/25)
- Screening: “Fargo,” Season 3, Noah Hawley, selections.
- Mary Otto, Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America (New York: The New Press, 2017), selections.
- Sarah Smarsh, “Poor teeth,” Aeon.
- Dan P. Lee, “Metal-Mouths,” New York Magazine. Supplementary:
- Sandra Kahn and Paul R. Erlich, Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018).