Fourteen of Walker Evans's evocative photographs of Brooklyn Bridge, most of which have never been published, appear in this edition of Alan Trachenberg's "Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol." In the new afterword Trachenberg explores the history of Hart Crane's "The Bridge," especially the poem's integral relationship with the powerful photography of Evans. " Brooklyn Bridge] is familiar in so many movies, in so many stage sets and, as Mr. Trachtenberg shows in this brilliant . . . book, it is at least as much a symbol as a reality. . . . Mr. Trachtenberg is always exciting and...
Fourteen of Walker Evans's evocative photographs of Brooklyn Bridge, most of which have never been published, appear in this edition of Alan Trachenbe...
In this book, Alan Trachtenberg reinterprets some of America's most significant photographs, presenting them not as static images but rather as rich cultural texts suffused with meaning and historical content. Reading American Photographs is lavishly illustrated with the work of such luminaries as Mathew Brady, Timothy O'Sullivan, and Walker Evans--pictures that document the American experience from 1839 to 1938. In an outstanding analysis, Trachtenberg eloquently articulates how the art of photography has both followed and shaped the...
Winner of the Charles C. Eldredge Prize
In this book, Alan Trachtenberg reinterprets some of America's most significant photographs, presenti...
The "Young American" critics -- Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford -- are well known as central figures in the Greenwich Village "Little Renaissance" of the 1910s and in the postwar debates about American culture and politics. In Beloved Community, Casey Blake considers these intellectuals as a coherant group and assesses the connection between thier cultural criticisms and their attempts to forge a communitarian alternative to liberal and socialist poitics.
Blake draws on biography to emphasize the intersection of questions of self, culture, and...
The "Young American" critics -- Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford -- are well known as central figures in the Greenwich...
Robert Allen's compelling book examines burlesque not only as popular entertainment but also as a complex and transforming cultural phenomenon. When Lydia Thompson and her controversial female troupe of "British Blondes" brought modern burlesque to the United States in 1868, the result was electric. Their impertinent humor, streetwise manner, and provocative parodies of masculinity brought them enormous popular success--and the condemnation of critics, cultural commentators, and even women's rights campaigners. Burlesque was a cultural threat, Allen argues, because it inverted the...
Robert Allen's compelling book examines burlesque not only as popular entertainment but also as a complex and transforming cultural phenomenon. When L...
Jane M. Gaines examines the phenomenon of images as property, focusing on the legal staus of mechanically produced visual and audio images from popular culture. Bridging the fields of critical legal studies and cultural studies, she analyzes copyright, trademark, and intellectual property law, asking how the law constructs works of authorship and who owns the country's cultural heritage.
Jane M. Gaines examines the phenomenon of images as property, focusing on the legal staus of mechanically produced visual and audio images from popula...
The rise of corporate capitalism was a cultural revolution as well as an economic event, according to James Livingston. That revolution resides, he argues, in the fundamental reconstruction of selfhood, or subjectivity, that attends the advent of an 'age of surplus' under corporate auspices. From this standpoint, consumer culture represents a transition to a society in which identities as well as incomes are not necessarily derived from the possession of productive labor or property. From the same standpoint, pragmatism and literary naturalism become ways of accommodating the new forms of...
The rise of corporate capitalism was a cultural revolution as well as an economic event, according to James Livingston. That revolution resides, he ar...
"A book of elegance, depth, breadth, nuance and subtlety." --W. Richard West Jr. (Founding Director of the National Museum of the American Indian), The Washington Post
A century ago, U.S. policy aimed to sever the tribal allegiances of Native Americans, limit their ancient liberties, and coercively prepare them for citizenship. At the same time, millions of new immigrants sought their freedom by means of that same citizenship. Alan Trachtenberg argues that the two developments were, inevitably, juxtaposed: Indians and immigrants together preoccupied the public imagination, and...
"A book of elegance, depth, breadth, nuance and subtlety." --W. Richard West Jr. (Founding Director of the National Museum of the American India...
A classic examination of the roots of corporate culture, newly revised and updated for the twenty first century
Alan Trachtenberg presents a balanced analysis of the expansion of capitalist power in the last third of the nineteenth century and the cultural changes it brought in its wake. In America's westward expansion, labor unrest, newly powerful cities, and newly mechanized industries, the ideals and ideas by which Americans lived were reshaped, and American society became more structured, with an entrenched middle class and a powerful business elite. Here, in an updated...
A classic examination of the roots of corporate culture, newly revised and updated for the twenty first century
"Lincoln's Smile demonstrates why Alan Trachtenberg has been the leading scholar in American studies for more than four decades." --Casey Nelson Blake, Columbia University
Alan Trachtenberg has always been interested in cultural artifacts that register meanings and feelings that Americans share even when they disagree about them. Some of the most beloved ones--like the famous last photograph of Abraham Lincoln, taken at the time of his second inaugural--are downright puzzling, and it is their obscure, riddlelike aspects that draw his attention in the scintillating...
"Lincoln's Smile demonstrates why Alan Trachtenberg has been the leading scholar in American studies for more than four decades." --Casey...
This is the first full-length examination of Lewis H. Hine (1874-1940), the intellectual and aesthetic father of social documentary photography. Kate Sampsell-Willmann assesses Hine's output through the lens of his photographs, his political and philosophical ideologies, and his social and aesthetic commitments to the dignity of labor and workers.
Using Hine's images, published articles, and private correspondence, Lewis Hine as Social Critic places the artist within the context of the Progressive Era and its associated movements and periodicals, such as the Works Progress...
This is the first full-length examination of Lewis H. Hine (1874-1940), the intellectual and aesthetic father of social documentary photography. Ka...
