American Visual Culture [Hardcover]

Visual culture - art, advertising, architecture, cinema, television, cartography, video, the internet, and images of science - has shaped American national identity more than that of any other country. Covering the period from the late nineteenth century to the present day, the book explores how visual culture has at once transformed and consolidated the image of the United States.

American Visual Culturepresents both an analysis of the diversity of American visual media and a critical introduction to the study and interpretation of visual culture.

Thematic chapters - on American urban and rural landscapes, icons, popular culture, art and photography, as well as on crime, anxiety and sex - describe the cultural, intellectual and historical context. Throughout, these themes are discussed in conjunction with clear and concise explanations of key visual theories and methodologies.

Rawlinson does visual culture studies an important service, using familiar theoretical approaches from a potpourri of other disciplines to present new interpretations of familiar images from American history. Devan Bissonette, The Journal of Midwest Modern Language AssociationMark Rawlinsonteaches in the Department of Art History at the University of Nottingham and is author ofCharles Sheeler: Modernism, Precisionism and the Borders of Abstraction.

Introduction * 1. Landscape and Power * 2. The City * 3. Popular Culture * 4. Icons and Iconography * 5. American Anxiety * 6. Crime and Punishment * 7. Buying and Selling Sex * 8. America in Art * bibliography * Index