Gender and Activism in a Little Magazine

The Modern Figures of the Masses
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4094-0945-8
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales)

Buch, Englisch, 194 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 454 g

Interweaving nuanced discussions of politics, visuality, and gender, Gender and Activism in a Little Magazine uncovers the complex ways that gender figures into the graphic satire created by artists for the New York City-based socialist journal, the Masses. This exceptional magazine was published between 1911 and 1917, during an unusually radical decade in American history, and featured cartoons drawn by artists of the Ashcan School and others, addressing questions of politics, gender, labor and class. Rather than viewing art from the Masses primarily in terms of its critical social stances or aesthetic choices, however, this study uses these images to open up new ways of understanding the complexity of early 20th-century viewpoints. By focusing on the activist images found in the Masses and studying their unique perspective on American modernity, Rachel Schreiber also returns these often-ignored images to their rightful place in the scholarship on American modernism. This book demonstrates that the centrality of the Masses artists' commitments to gender and class equality is itself a characterization of the importance of these issues for American moderns. Despite their alarmingly regular reliance on gender stereotypes”and regardless of any assessment of the efficacy of the artists' activism”the graphic satire of the Masses offers invaluable insights into the workings of gender and the role of images in activist practices at the beginning of the last century.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schreiber, Rachel

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Sport | Tourismus | Freizeit Antiquitäten, Sammelobjekte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents: 'Gee, Mag, think of us bein' on a magazine cover!': introduction; The miner emerges: the gendered division of labor; $acred motherhood: parenthood in the age of maternalism; Putting the best foot forward: sex and the single woman; She will spike war's gun: suffrage, citizenship, and war; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Rachel Schreiber is Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute, California, USA.