Looking for America

Looking for America: The Visual Production of Nation and People is a groundbreaking collection that explores the “visual” in defining the kaleidoscope of American experience and American identity in the 20th century. Covers enduringly important topics in American history: nationhood, class, politics of identity, and the visual mapping of “others” Includes editorial introductions, suggested readings, a primer on how to "read" an image, and a guide to visual archives and collections Well-illustrated book for those in American Studies and related fields eager to incorporate the visual into their teaching—and telling—of the American story.

Acknowledgments. Introduction (Ardis Cameron). Suggested Readings. PART I: 1860-1900. Modern Types. 1. Sleuthing Towards America: Visual Detection in Everyday Life (Ardis Cameron). 2. Cartes de Visite Portrait Photographs and the Culture of Class Formation (Andrea L. Volpe). Suggested Readings. PART II: 1900-1940. The Embodied Nation: Race, Gender, and the Politics of the Camera. 3. Photographing the "American Negro": Nation, Race, and Photography at the Paris Exposition of 1900 (Shawn Michelle Smith). 4. Techniques of the Imaginary Nation: Engendering Family Photography (Laura Wexler). "The Eye of Power": Cross-Class Looking. 5. Private Eyes, Public Women: Images of Class and Sex in the Urban South, Atlanta, Georgia, 1913-1915 (Jacquelyn Dowd Hall). 6. Margaret Bourke-White’s Red Coat; or, Slumming in the Thirties (Paula Rabinowitz). Suggested Readings. PART III: 1940-2000. Home and Nation: Imaging the "All-American" Family. 7. "The Kind of People Who Make Good Americans": Nationalism and Life’s Family Ideal (Wendy Kozol). 8. Visua Culture and Working-Class Community: Photography and the Organizing of the Steelworkers’ Union in Chicago (Larry Peterson). 9. Sit-coms and Suburbs: Positioning the 1950s Homemaker (Mary Beth Haralovich). The Eye of Difference: The Politics of Appearance. 10. The Zoot-Suit and Style Warfare (Stuart Cosgrove). 11. Looking Jewish, Seeing Jews (Matthew Frye Jacobson). Troubling Sights (Sites): Visual Maps and America’s "Others". 12. The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes (Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins). 13. When Strangers Bring Cameras: The Poetics and Politics of Othered Places (Ardis Cameron). Suggested Readings. Appendix A: "Reading the Visual Record" (Elspeth H. Brown). Appendix B: List of Visual Archives (Ardis Cameron). Index.