Imaging American Women - Idea and Ideals in Cultural History

Martha Banta

Columbia Univ Pr

1987

844 páginas

1d 4h 8m

ISBN-10: 0231062168

Examining American art and culture, 1876-1918, Banta discovers that ideas such as the "American Girl" colored female life. Even more interestingly, the period's aggressive nationalism was largely codified in female formsLiberty, Republic, Columbia, etc. Banta clarifies semiotics with examples, explains the conventions that make it possible to "read" a painting, and uses a wide range of sources: Christy and Gibson illustrations, society portraits, advertisements, posters, drawing texts, gravestones, family photographs. Less driven by its thesis than Bram Dijkstra's Idols of Perversity: fantasies of feminine evil in fin-de-siecle culture (Oxford, 1986), this is a splendid complement. Both reveal the rewards of using art to explore cultural values. Sally Mitchell, English Dept., Temple Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.