Exploring how the face and body of America were imagined both physically and metaphorically during the Civil War, this book shows how visual iconography affected changes in postbellum gendered and racialised identifications of the nation.
Facing America investigates and explains the changing face of America during the Civil War. Drawing on the literature as well as the photographs and political cartoons of the period, Shirley Samuels also explores the body of the nation imagined both physically and metaphorically, arguing that the Civil War marks a dramatic shift from identifying the American nation as feminine to identifying it as masculine.
A study of Civil War iconography is long overdue.... Samuels offers a fertile reading of that symbol system and its slippages. Examining texts of all types--novels, statues, and images--she lays bare the preoccupying anxieties.... Samuels has an intriguing mind, and it is a pleasure to watch it work. Text after text, subhead after subhead, she offers compelling readings and telling juxtapositions of familiar and unfamiliar documents.
