Margot Mifflin is an English professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York. The author of Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, she is currently writing a biography of Olive Oatman.

• FULL TEXT
  December 2005/January 2006: A Blank Human Canvas
  Tattoo imagery has a rich tradition in American fiction, from Melville’s kindly cannibal to Shelley Jackson’s story printed on 2,095 bodies.