Looking for America
The Visual Production of Nation and People
A groundbreaking collection on the role of the visual in shaping American national identity — race, gender, ethnicity, and the politics of who is seen.
An overview.
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.
It covers enduringly important topics in American history — nationhood, class, the politics of identity, and the visual mapping of "others" — and includes editorial introductions, suggested readings, a primer on how to "read" an image, and a guide to visual archives and collections.
Introducing students to the visual in all its complexity and variety — the language of signs, the historical construction and meaning of "types," and the uses and politics of photography, film, bodily display, and documentaries — the volume underscores the productivity of the visual in thinking about race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and regionality. It clearly demonstrates that the ways in which people see and are seen determine who they are and how they see themselves as citizens and Americans.
“This book illuminates the role of the visual in constructions of American national identity. Most impressive is the demonstration that vision itself is not transparent, but an instrument that shapes, even as it is shaped by, relations of power.”
“An invigorating, even stunning revelation. I left it feeling as if I had learned a new language. Congratulations to Ardis Cameron for the creative insight with which she has woven together an argument for the indispensable value of 'looking' into the past.”
