To the holiday-cheerful, Today’s post comes to you from a very special guest, someone who can speak with far more authority about Easter than I ever could (and far more irony than I would ever dare), Mollie Wilson O’Reilly. Mollie is an associate editor of Commonweal Magazine, and blogs at Restricted View. You may have [...]
Archive for the ‘visual culture’ Category
Easter Bunny Blues
Posted in holidays, periodicals, religion, visual culture, tagged easter on April 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Q & A: Tania Modleski, Feminist Film Critic
Posted in books, feminist theory, film, Lazy Scholar Interview, television, visual culture on March 24, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Dear diligent-ish followers, Today marks the premiere of a semi-regular feature in these pages: the Lazy Scholar Interview. Each entry asks scholars of American culture a series of questions about the books, resources, and trends that inspire, excite, distract, or vex them—often at the same time. With that flourish, I’m pleased to introduce the first [...]
Lesbian Love Between the Covers
Posted in books, LGBT, pulp fiction, visual culture on March 22, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Dear spring break scholars gone wild, I’ve just returned to Cambridge after a joyous ride through the Southwest, from Los Angeles to Santa Fe and back—so expect some Divided States posts in the coming weeks. For now though, I’m suffering from spring break hangover, making it somewhat hard to keep my eyes and mind focused. [...]
African-American Portraits, Black and White Photographers
Posted in african-americans, photography, visual culture, tagged Black History Month on March 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Dear deadline dodgers, Regular readers may have noticed my online output has slowed lately, for which I can only blame the short days, the rainy weather, and that fine art some call “dissertating.” Alas, in my delinquency, I missed a chance to offer a Black History Month missive—so I hope you’ll accept this belated attempt. [...]
What the World Needs Now
Posted in holidays, scrapbooks, visual culture, tagged valentine's day on February 12, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Dear leisure suit lovers, It’s here again, everyone’s favorite Hallmark holiday, Valentine’s Day, a chance for singles to moan and couples to glow (and sometimes gloat). Where might we find traces of this hallowed festival in the digital archive? Well, friends, I’m glad you asked. Today we turn to the Notable Women of Simmons Scrapbook [...]
Flashy Dressers
Posted in ballet, film, Hispanic, musicals, theater, visual culture on February 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
To the relaxation-inclined, Like many people, my first exposure to theater came not from any Broadway house but the humbler stages of our local high school. Trust me, you haven’t seen Fiddler on the Roof until you’ve seen my brother in his walk-on-role as a priest! Or Twelve Angry Men performed by twelve not angry [...]
Covers to Judge Books By
Posted in books, pulp fiction, science fiction, visual culture, tagged paperbacks, pulp fiction on February 1, 2010 | 1 Comment »
My distractable friends, I must admit, proverbs be damned, that I’m often lured to a book by a well-designed dust jacket, even a carefully chosen font. So for today’s entry, why not spotlight some resources on the artistry of book covers? For starters, take a look at the University of Colorado’s Publishers’ Binding Collection, featuring [...]
The Divided States #1: Pennsylvania Mania!
Posted in books, Divided States, fashion, music, poetry, shopping, visual culture, tagged Pennsylvania on December 14, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Dear searchers of lost time, Some of you might know that I have an odd fascination with the state guide project commissioned by the WPA during the Great Depression—a series of guidebooks detailing the history, customs, and sights of each and every corner of the nation. The guidebooks vary widely in quality, yet they remain [...]
Foxy Brown and Aunt Jemima, Exposed
Posted in advertising, cartoons, commercialism, food, visual culture, tagged aunt jemima, foxy brown on December 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
O pioneers of the digital frontier, Anyone who’s watched Spike Lee’s sometimes brilliant, sometimes obvious 2000 film Bamboozled, Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia might feel eerily familiar—the docile, self-sacrificing”mammy,” the lazy, stealing, and insatiable “coon” (on the left). Less familiar to some readers may be the sexually virile “Jezebel” stereotype, embodied, [...]
Healthcare and Cooties
Posted in advertising, illness, medicine, visual culture, tagged healthcare on December 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Dear Snuggie™ advocates, I spent much of Friday flexing my would-be public intellectual muscles at a lively and illuminating roundtable discussion on the healthcare crisis (media coverage, the public option, the Stupak amendment) organized by Harvard’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality department. Yet as Jill Lepore’s recent Talk of the Town plainly shows, healthcare has been an ongoing [...]
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