American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

Smith, Shawn Michelle

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Description: American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

BOOKAmerican Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

Shawn Michelle Smith

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00342

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23309

Visual texts uniquely demonstrate the contested terms of American identity. In American Archives Shawn Michelle Smith offers a bold and disturbing account of how photography and the sciences of biological racialism joined forces in the nineteenth century to offer an idea of what Americans look like — or “should” look like. Her varied sources, which include the middle-class portrait, baby picture, criminal mugshot, and eugenicist record, as well as literary, scientific, and popular texts, enable her to demonstrate how new visual paradigms posed bodily appearance as an index to interior “essence.” Ultimately we see how competing preoccupations over gender, class, race, and American identity were played out in the making of a wide range of popular and institutional photographs.

Smith demonstrates that as the body was variously mapped and defined as the key to essentialized identities, the image of the white middle-class woman was often held up as the most complete American ideal. She begins by studying gendered images of middle-class domesticity to expose a transformation of feminine architectures of interiority into the “essences” of “blood,” “character,” and “race.” She reads visual documents, as well as literary texts by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Pauline Hopkins, and Theodore Dreiser, as both indices of and forms of resistance to dominant images of gender, class, race, and national identity. Through this analysis Smith shows how the white male gaze that sought to define and constrain white women and people of color was contested and transformed over the course of the nineteenth century.

Smith identifies nineteenth-century visual paradigms that continue to shape debates about the terms of American belonging today. American Archives contributes significantly to the growing field of American visual cultural studies, and it is unprecedented in explaining how practices of racialized looking and the parameters of “American looks” were established in the first place.

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Author

Shawn Michelle Smith

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Print publication date December 1999 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780691004778

EISBN 9780300273175

Illustrations 56

Print Status in print

Publisher (in print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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List of illustrations

Portrait of an unidentified woman
Dr. Spurzheim. Divisions of the organs of phrenology marked externally
What Miscegenation Is!
The Miscegenation Ball
Miscegenation or the Millennium of Abolitionism
Princess Gabrielle Buonaparte
Portrait of Sara Payson Parton (Willis) (Fanny Fern)
Portrait of Sara Payson Parton (Willis) (Fanny Fern)
Reproduction Par la Photogravure
Verso d'une Notice Signalétique
Relevé du Signalement Anthropométrique
New York City Police Department: taking Bertillon measurements--armspan
New York City Police Department: taking Bertillon measurements--cranium
New York City Police Department: taking Bertillon measurements--ear
New York City Police Department: taking Bertillon measurements--foot size
New York City Police Department: taking Bertillon measurements--hand size
New York City N.Y.C. Police HQ: taking Bertillon measurements for identifying prisoners--fingerprints
New York City Police Department: taking mug photo of prisoner
Forme générale de la tête vue de profil
Tableau récapitulatif des formes sériées les plus caractéristiques á signaler sur la fiche en tout état de cause
Identité individuelle avec dissemblance physiognomique
Mug shot of Edward McCarthy
Francis Galton, aged 71
Specimens of Composite Portraiture
Composites, made from Portraits of Criminals convicted of Murder, Manslaughter or Crimes of Violence
Composites, Comparison of Criminal and Normal Populations
Countess Castiglione
Album page with photographs of Countess Casiglione
Les jambes
Scherzo di Follia
Countess Castiglione in despair
Advertisement showing woman's dress covered with photographs
Godey's Lady's Book fashion plate, detail
Trude & I Masked, Short Skirts 11 p.m.
Les yeux mirés
Baby's Picture Is Always Treasured, Cyclone Cameras
The Family Photograph Tree
Photographing Children at Home
Now smile a little dolly, while I take your picture
Description of Child at Birth, The Life History Album
Freedman's National and Family Record
Family Record
The Jewish Type
Portrait of Franklin Pierce
Old-Time Cabin
A Hampton Graduate's home
Saluting the flag at the Whittier Primary School, Hampton, Virginia
Thanksgiving Day lesson at Whittier Primary School, Hampton, Virginia
Class in American History, Hampton Institute
Portrait of African American Boy
Portrait of African American Boy
Portrait of African American Girl
Portrait of African American Girl
Standard Photograph (to illustrate profile and full-face portraits)
Portrait of African American Girl
Time magazine cover, The New Face of America

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Contents

Shawn Michelle Smith

American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

Contents

Author

Shawn Michelle Smith

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23310

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Acknowledgments

Shawn Michelle Smith

American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

Acknowledgments

Author

Shawn Michelle Smith

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23311

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Introduction: American Archives

Shawn Michelle Smith

American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

In “A Small History of Photography,” Walter Benjamin proclaims, “Sudden shifts of power such as are now overdue in our society can make the ability to read facial types a matter of vital importance...

Author

Shawn Michelle Smith

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.3-10

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00342.1

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23312

Chapter subject tags:Racism--United States--History--19th centuryHawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864. House of the seven gablesBenjamin, Walter, 1892-1940Social classes--United States--History--19th centuryPortrait photography--United States--19th centuryPhotograph archives--United States--History--19th centuryWomen and gender in art--United States--19th centuryAmerican literature--19th century

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1. Prying Eyes and Middle-Class Magic in The House of the Seven Gables

Shawn Michelle Smith

American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables, Holgrave describes daguerreotypy as a process of making pictures “out of sunshine” and asserts, “There is a wonderful insight in heaven’s broad and simple sunshine...

Author

Shawn Michelle Smith

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.11-28

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00342.2

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23313

Chapter subject tags:Racism--United States--History--19th centuryHawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864. House of the seven gablesPortrait photography--United States--19th centurySocial classes--United States--History--19th centuryWomen and gender in art--United States--19th centuryDaguerreotype--United States--History--19th centuryAmerican literature--19th century

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2. The Properties of Blood

Shawn Michelle Smith

American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

“To plant A family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do. The truth is, that, once in every half century at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity...

Author

Shawn Michelle Smith

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.29-50

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00342.3

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23314

Chapter subject tags:Racism--United States--History--19th centuryHawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864. House of the seven gablesPortrait photography--United States--19th centurySocial classes--United States--History--19th centuryArt and literature--United States--History--19th centuryScientific racism--United States--History--19th centuryMiscegenation in art--United States--19th centuryDaguerreotype--United States--History--19th centuryEugenics--United States--History--19th century

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3. Superficial Depths

Shawn Michelle Smith

American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

At the most basic level, R.H.E.’s evocative statements express regret over the inevitable fate of her own passing and fading from memory...

Author

Shawn Michelle Smith

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.51-112

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00342.4

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23315

Chapter subject tags:Racism--United States--History--19th centuryHawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864. House of the seven gablesBertillon systemPortrait photography--United States--History--19th centuryScientific racism--United States--History--19th centuryBenjamin, Walter, 1892-1940Social classes--United States--History--19th centuryPhotograph archives--United States--History--19th centuryArt and literature--United States--History--19th century

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4. “Baby’s Picture Is Always Treasured”: Eugenics and the Reproduction of Whiteness in the Family Photograph Album

Shawn Michelle Smith

American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

To twentieth-century readers accustomed to the now ubiquitous nature of “baby’s photograph,” R.H.E.’s observation about the stupidity of these images seems either shocking or wonderfully perverse...

Author

Shawn Michelle Smith

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.113-135

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00342.5

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23316

Chapter subject tags:Racism--United States--History--19th centuryPortrait photography--United States--History--19th centurySocial classes--United States--History--19th centuryFamily archives--United States--19th centuryDaguerreotype--United States--History--19th centuryEugenics--United States--History--19th century

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5. America Coursing through Her Veins

Shawn Michelle Smith

American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

On April 30, 1890, the Sons of the American Revolution voted to bar women from their society, thereby laying the foundation on which a group of indignant white women...

Author

Shawn Michelle Smith

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.136-156

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00342.6

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23317

Chapter subject tags:Racism--United States--History--19th centuryPortrait photography--United States--HistoryWomen and gender in art--United States--19th centuryGenealogy--United States--History--19th centuryDaughters of the American Revolution--United States--History--19th centuryFamily archives--United States--19th centurySocial classes--United States--History--19th centuryEugenics--United States--History--19th century

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6. Photographing the “American Negro”: Nation, Race, and Photography at the Paris Exposition of 1900

Shawn Michelle Smith

American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

In “The Conservation of Races,” published in 1897, W. E. B. Du Bois asks, “What, after all, am I? Am I an American or am I a Negro? Can I be both...

Author

Shawn Michelle Smith

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.157-186

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00342.7

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23318

Chapter subject tags:Pavillon des États-Unis (Exposition universelle, 1900, Paris, France)Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963Galton, Francis, 1822-1911Johnston, Frances Benjamin, 1864-1952Portrait photography--United States--History--19th centuryVisual culture--United States--History--19th centuryBlack people--Race identity--United States--History--19th centuryScientific racism--United States--History--19th centuryAssimilation (Sociology)--United States--History--19th century

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7. Looking Back: Pauline Hopkins’s Challenge to Eugenics

Shawn Michelle Smith

American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

The Racializing of American character, which I have examined in preceding chapters, had profound effects on African American articulations of national and racial identities at the turn of the century...

Author

Shawn Michelle Smith

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.187-205

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00342.8

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23319

Chapter subject tags:Racism--United States--History--19th centuryEugenics--United States--History--19th centuryScientific racism--United States--History--19th centuryAfrican American women novelists--19th centuryRacially mixed people--Race identity--United States--19th centuryHopkins, Pauline E. (Pauline Elizabeth)American literature--19th century

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8. Reconfiguring a Masculine Gaze

Shawn Michelle Smith

American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

In an almost irresistible passage in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, a pair of soft, new leather shoes calls out to the young Caroline Meeber...

Author

Shawn Michelle Smith

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.206-221

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00342.9

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23320

Chapter subject tags:Dreiser, Theodore, 1871-1945. Sister CarrieSocial classes--United States--History--19th centuryRacism--United States--History--19th centuryVisual culture--United States--History--19th centuryConsumer (Economics)--United States--History--19th centuryWomen and gender--United States--History--19th centuryAmerican literature--History--19th century

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Afterimages: A Brief Look at American Visual Culture in the 1990s

Shawn Michelle Smith

American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

In the fall of 1993, the editors of Time magazine created a new American cover girl, a computer-generated, “multiethnic” “Eve...

Author

Shawn Michelle Smith

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.222-225

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00342.10

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23321

Chapter subject tags:Visual culture--United States--History--20th centuryRacism--United States--History--20th century

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