This panel engages the issue of the "body" in feminist debates via narratives of the small, the miniature, and the microscopic. Examining bodies both materially and as objects of cultural production, we argue that representations of the corporeal small work to reinforce and contravene master narratives of gender, difference, and the complete and integrated self. We seek to address the way the human body furnishes "natural" alibis for cultural convention and political arrangements, how anatomy is constructed as an analog for social identity, and the various implications of "bringing the small to light."

Papers engaging the topic of DNA from a feminist perspective are especially welcome.