Jason Weems
Jason Weems is associate professor of American art and visual/material culture at the University of California, Riverside.
Weems, Jason
Weems, Jason
United States of America
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Description: Humans
Human beings are organisms, but “the human being” is a term referring to a complicated, self-contradictory, and historically evolving set of ideas and practices. This volume explores the competing understandings of the human being that have figured in the history of American art. Its seven essays consider a range of artworks from the early modern period to the present in order to...
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.10-39
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00289.1
Description: Humans
BOOKHumans
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00289
Humans are organisms, but “the human being” is a term referring to a complicated, self-contradictory, and historically evolving set of concepts and practices. Humans explores competing versions, constructs, and ideas of the human being that have figured prominently in the arts of the United States. These essays consider a range of artworks from the colonial period to the present, examining how they have reflected, shaped, and modeled ideas of the human in American culture and politics. The book addresses to what extent artworks have conferred more humanity on some human beings than others, how art has shaped ideas about the relationships between humans and other beings and things, and in what ways different artistic constructions of the human being evolved, clashed, and intermingled over the course of American history. Humans both tells the history of a concept foundational to US civilization and proposes new means for its urgently needed rethinking.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.*
Print publication date December 2021 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780932171726
EISBN 9780300267594
Illustrations 50
Print Status in print
Description: Scale
In June 1864, as the war to reunite the states bloodied the nation, the Chicago Pork Packers Association proposed a different union: that of the city’s various livestock exchanges ...
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.106-143
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00194.004