Browse Items (101 total)

A bio­graph­i­cal approach to pho­tographs of slaves, con­sid­er­ing the images in rela­tion to the per­sonal and pro­fes­sional atti­tudes of the nat­u­ral­ist who com­mis­sioned them.

An inves­ti­ga­tion into the kinds of mean­ings that pho­to­graphic por­traits of black Civil War sol­diers had at the time of their mak­ing as well as some of the chal­lenges that such a recov­ery poses for his­to­ri­ans today.

Juxtaposing an 1850 daguerreotype portrait of a slave, a painting by Jean-François Millet, a photograph by Lewis Hine, and a poem by Sterling Brown, this essay seeks to understand how, and under what conditions, even forced labor may be reclaimed and…

This col­lab­o­ra­tive essay by a pro­fes­sor and her stu­dents in a col­lege writ­ing course demon­strates how the images in the Mir­ror of Race exhi­bi­tion may be used to teach research and reflec­tion on the mean­ing of race in Amer­i­can…

A dis­cus­sion of the ambi­gu­ity of the color line in nineteenth-cen­tury visual rep­re­sen­ta­tions of race.

What is the mean­ing of mid-nineteenth-cen­tury por­traits of white women with strange names, exotic cos­tumes, and wildly frizzed hair?

This essay ana­lyzes the social and racial sig­nif­i­cance of an unusual mid-nineteenth-century daguerreo­type of a white abolitionist’s branded hand.