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- Title
Race and the Rise of a Mass Visual Culture: The Case of David Hunter Strother's Virginia Illustrated.
- Authors
Lukasik, Christopher
- Abstract
The publication of David Hunter Strother's Virginia Illustrated under the pseudonym Porte Crayon in Harper's Monthly (1854–56) provides a compelling case study through which to consider the role of race in the development of a US mass visual culture. The media combinations found within and the reception history of Virginia Illustrated demonstrate the importance of racialized viewing to the early success of Harper's Monthly at a critical moment in media history. To be sure, Virginia Illustrated circulated racist stereotypes to be mass consumed, but the image/text operations of Strother's literary sketches and illustrations also extended the privileges and pleasures inherent in the performance of the white male gaze to the expanding readership of Harper's Monthly despite the differences in region, gender, and class of that audience. The case study of Virginia Illustrated challenges us to revisit the oddly marginalized relationship of nineteenth-century illustration to literary, art, and media history and invites us to situate nineteenth-century US literature into the wider media landscape of which it was undoubtedly a part.
- Subjects
UNITED States; STROTHER, David Hunter, 1816-1888; VIRGINIA Illustrated (Book); HARPER'S Magazine (Periodical); AMERICAN authors; AMERICAN literature; AMERICAN artists; POPULAR literature; SERIAL publication of books; VISUAL culture; RACISM in literature; 19TH century American literature; BIOGRAPHY (Literary form); HISTORY of popular culture
- Publication
American Literary History, 2020, Vol 32, Issue 3, p446
- ISSN
0896-7148
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/alh/ajaa013