Strong versions of evolutionary psychologists have proposed that men possess perceptual mechanisms that engender a preference for women with low waist-to-hip ratios (WHR), typically 0.70, as this is considered maximally healthy and fertile. This has taken to be culturally and temporally invariant. In the present study, two semi-expert and two non-expert judges made measurements of the WHR of nude females in paintings by Pieter Pauwel Rubens. The results showed that the mean WHR of Rubens' women was 0.776, significantly higher than the reported preference for WHRs of 0.70. Possible non-adaptive explanations for this result are proposed in conclusion.
/ SWAMI, GRAY AND FURNHAM
This series concerns Comics Studies-with a capital "c" and a capital "s." It feels good to write it that way. From emerging as a fringe interest within Literature and Media/Cultural Studies departments, to becoming a minor field, to maturing into the fastest growing field in the Humanities, to becoming a nascent discipline, the journey has been a hard but spectacular one. Those capital letters have been earned.Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels covers all aspects of the comic strip, comic book, and graphic novel, explored through clear and informative texts offering expansive coverage and theoretical sophistication. It is international in scope and provides a space in which scholars from all backgrounds can present new thinking about politics, history, aesthetics, production, distribution, and reception as well as the digital realm. Books appear in one of two forms: traditional monographs of 60,000 to 90,000 words and shorter works (Palgrave Pivots) of 20,000 to 50,000 words. All are rigorously peer-reviewed. Palgrave Pivots include new takes on theory, concise histories, and-not leastconsidered provocations. After all, Comics Studies may have come a long way, but it can't progress without a little prodding.Series Editor Roger Sabin is Professor of Popular Culture at the University of the Arts London, UK. His books include Adult Comics: An Introduction and Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels, and his recent research into nineteenth-century comics is award-winning. He serves on the boards of the main academic journals in the field and reviews graphic novels for the international media.
This article addresses Alan Moore's earliest work for zines and underground papers from 1971 to 1980. It argues that the hippie counterculture was a formative influence not only on his anarchist politics but his approach to cultural production, and an awareness of its significance is
therefore crucial to the critical understanding of his oeuvre as a whole. Equally Moore's experience of the underground augments historical understanding of the UK counterculture itself and the role of comics within it, and challenges dominant chronological narratives that insist on a definitive
split between its political and cultural wings during this period. This article considers Moore's output in illustration, poetry and prose, but particularly focuses on his earliest comics, featured in Embryo, anon. and The Backstreet Bugle. It looks in detail at the Northampton
Arts Lab and the underground press as counter-institutions, and spaces in which Moore developed highly politicized aesthetic and creative strategies that he would carry into his later professional work. These included a commitment to the realization of non-alienated and collaborative artistic
production, a partisan engagement with key political issues, an insistence on formal experimentation and an emphasis on a demystified and enabling relationship with the reader.
Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel, Annalisa Di Liddo (2009) Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 211 pp., ISBN 9781604732139, Paperback, 21.99
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