The Pleasure of the Parlor: Mocking the “Home Guard” in Civil War Visual Culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Schulman
Keyword(s):  
Graphic News ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 13-46
Author(s):  
Amanda Frisken

This chapter examines sexuality discourse and definitions of obscenity in print media following the Civil War. Editors of illustrated sporting weeklies, such as Frank Leslie (The Days’ Doings) and Richard K. Fox (The National Police Gazette) pushed the boundaries of visual representation. Meanwhile, anti-vice activist Anthony Comstock sought control over what could be seen in print. In pursuing the prosecution of Victoria Woodhull, Tennessee Claflin, Ezra Heywood, and D. M. Bennett, as well as sporting publications, Comstock shifted the focus of visual culture. His success in eliminating images he found shocking distorted the visualization of alleged sexual crimes as primarily the racial assault on white women by men of color. In other words, Comstock helped make the racialized rape/lynching mythos the dominant visual expression of sexual violence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
pp. 870-899
Author(s):  
JAMES BROOKES

The Civil War marked a revolution in the use of visual culture, during which imagery became a soldier's tool. Engagement with imagery presented both an opportunity and a dilemma, forcing some soldier-artists to abandon existing artistic conventions, whilst others fortified them, in search of ways to represent both the war's violence and tedium. The visual idealization of war jarred uncomfortably with the depiction of the conflict's realities. The creation of a diverse grassroots archive ran parallel to the mainstream narrative, examination of which offers new insight into how some soldiers visualized the war in opposition to themes exhibited in popular culture.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Aston Gonzalez

This introduction explains the importance of visual culture to the United States in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. People believed images to have persuasive powers and activists used them to convince viewers to join various social movements that included antislavery and black emigration. Black activists produced images before, during, and after the Civil War that included daguerreotypes, lithographs, moving panoramas, and cartes de visite. They quickly seized these technologies and mobilized the popularity, desirability, and unique capabilities of each. Studying the works of these black cultural producers expands our understanding of the arsenal of strategies African Americans drew upon in the service of increasing black rights.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline A. Hartzell ◽  
Matthew Hoddie
Keyword(s):  

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