{"product_id":"portraits-of-resistance-activating-art-during-slavery-9780300257632","title":"Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery","description":"\u003cb\u003eA highly original history of American portraiture that places the experiences of enslaved people at its center\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"An argument for a new kind of American art history . . . a textbook for the future of the field.\"--Mia L. Bagneris, \u003ci\u003ecaa.reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e This timely and eloquent book tells a new history of American art: how enslaved people mobilized portraiture for acts of defiance. Revisiting the origins of portrait painting in the United States, Jennifer Van Horn reveals how mythologies of whiteness and of nation building erased the aesthetic production of enslaved Americans of African descent and obscured the portrait's importance as a site of resistance. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Moving from the wharves of colonial Rhode Island to antebellum Louisiana plantations to South Carolina townhouses during the Civil War, the book illuminates how enslaved people's relationships with portraits also shaped the trajectory of African American art post-emancipation. Van Horn asserts that Black creativity, subjecthood, viewership, and iconoclasm constituted instances of everyday rebellion against systemic oppression. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003ePortraits of Resistance\u003c\/i\u003e is not only a significant intervention in the fields of American art and history but also an important contribution to the reexamination of racial constructs on which American culture was built.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJennifer Van Horn\u003c\/b\u003e is associate professor of art history and history at the University of Delaware.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Yale University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50383134490898,"sku":"9780300257632","price":51.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_303013b2-c21a-4182-b3c9-9baa7393f599.jpg?v=1728779187","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/portraits-of-resistance-activating-art-during-slavery-9780300257632","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}