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130 rare photos offer fascinating visual record of Chinatown before the great 1906 earthquake. Informative text traces history of Chinese in California.
Throughout European history, Jews have been associated with commerce and the money trade, rendered both visible and vulnerable, like Shylock, by their economic distinctiveness. This is the story of Jewish perceptions of this economic difference and its effect on modern Jewish identity.
This book explores the history, the reality, and the complex fantasy of American and European Chinatowns and traces the patterns of transnational travel and traffic between China, South East Asia, Europe, and the United States which informed the development of these urban sites. Despite obvious structural or architectural similarities and overlaps, Chinatowns differ markedly depending on their location. European versions of Chinatowns can certainly not be considered mere replications of the American model. Paying close attention to regional specificities and overarching similarities, Chinatowns thus discloses the important European backdrop to a phenomenon commonly associated with North Amer...
In the early twentieth century Hollywood was fascinated by the Far East. Chinese immigrants, however, were excluded since 1882 and racism pervaded U.S. society. When motion pictures became the most popular form of entertainment, immigration and race were heavily debated topics. 'Visualizing Orientalness' is the first book that analyses the significance of motion pictures within these discourses. Taking up approaches from the fields of visual culture studies and visual history, Björn A. Schmidt undertakes a visual discourse analysis of films from the 1910s to 1930s. The author shows how the visuality of films and the historical discourses and practices that surrounded them portrayed Chinese immigration and contributed to notions of Chinese Americans as a foreign and other race.
Dorothea Lange's depression-era photographs became mythic symbols in their time and are exhibited worldwide as standards of classic photography. In this first biography of Lange, Milton Meltzer documents her development as an artist and provides a moving portrayal of a life burdened with illness and the conflicting demands of family and profession.
Ornamentalism offers one of the first sustained and original theories of Asiatic femininity. Examining ornamentality, in lieu of Orientalism, as a way to understand the representation, circulation, and ontology of Asiatic femininity, this study extends our vocabulary about the woman of color beyond the usual platitudes about objectification.
"From 1875 to the first years of the twentieth century, artists were drawn to the towns of Monterey, Pacific Grove, and then Carmel. Artist at Continent's End is the first in-depth examination of the importance of the Monterey Peninsula, which during this period came to epitomize California art. Beautifully illustrated with a wealth of images, including many never before published, this book tells the fascinating story of eight principal protagonists--Jules Tavernier, William Keith, Charles Rollo Peters, Arthur Mathews, Evelyn McCormick, Francis McComas, Gottardo Piazzoni, and photographer Arnold Genthe--and a host of secondary players who together established an enduring artistic legacy."--prospectus.
What did it mean for people of color in nineteenth-century America to speak or write "white"? More specifically, how many and what kinds of meaning could such "white" writing carry? In ReWriting White, Todd Vogel looks at how America has racialized language and aesthetic achievement. To make his point, he showcases the surprisingly complex interactions between four nineteenth-century writers of color and the "standard white English" they adapted for their own moral, political, and social ends. The African American, Native American, and Chinese American writers Vogel discusses delivered their messages in a manner that simultaneously demonstrated their command of the dominant discourse of thei...
This lavishly-illustrated tour through the film career of Greta Garbo (1905-1990) provides a biographical background of the star and an analysis of her very special mystique. Payne describes how Garbo's timeless beauty worked its magic in such films as Flesh and the Devil, Anna Christie, Mata Hari, Grand Hotel, Queen Christina, Camille, and Ninotchka. Remarkable photos show the transformation of working-class girl Greta Gustafsson into a Hollywood bit player, and later into an icon of cinema glamour.
James W. Trent uses public documents, private letters, investigative reports, and rare photographs to explore our changing perceptions of mental retardation over the past 150 years. He contends that the economic vulnerability of mentally retarded people (and their families), more than the claims made for their intellectual or social limitations, has determined their institutional treatment.