The Fruits of Empire

Art, Food, and the Politics of Race in the Age of American Expansion
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-0-520-29639-8
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 264 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 261 mm x 184 mm, Gewicht: 834 g

Reihe: California Studies in Food and Culture

The Fruits of Empire is a history of American expansion through the lens of art and food. In the decades after the Civil War, Americans consumed an unprecedented amount of fruit as it grew more accessible with advancements in refrigeration and transportation technologies. This excitement for fruit manifested in an explosion of fruit imagery within still life paintings, prints, trade cards, and more. Images of fruit labor and consumption by immigrants and people of color also gained visibility, merging alongside the efforts of expansionists to assimilate land and, in some cases, people into the national body. Divided into five chapters on visual images of the grape, orange, watermelon, banana, and pineapple, this book demonstrates how representations of fruit struck the nerve of the nation’s most heated debates over land, race, and citizenship in the age of high imperialism.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Klein, Shana

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: 20./21. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. Westward the Star of Empire: California Grapes and Western Expansion
2. The Citrus Awakening: Florida Oranges and the Reconstruction South
3. Cutting Away the Rind: A History of Racism and Violence in Representations of Watermelon
4. Seeing Spots: The Fever for Bananas, Land, and Power
5. Pineapple Republic: Representations of the Dole Pineapple from Hawaiian Annexation to Statehood
Conclusion: New Directions in Scholarship on Food in American Art

Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Shana Klein is Assistant Professor of Art History at Kent State University. She is the recipient of several research fellowships from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, American Council of Learned Societies, Henry Luce Foundation, and Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, among others.