Seeing Race in Modern America

Seeing Race in Modern America

by Matthew Pratt Guterl (Author)

Synopsis

In this fiercely urgent book, Matthew Pratt Guterl focuses on how and why we come to see race in very particular ways. What does it mean to see someone as a color? As racially mixed or ethnically ambiguous? What history makes such things possible? Drawing creatively from advertisements, YouTube videos, and everything in between, Guterl redirects our understanding of racial sight away from the dominant categories of color - away from brown and yellow and black and white--and instead insists that we confront the visual practices that make those same categories seem so irrefutably important.

Zooming out for the bigger picture, Guterl illuminates the long history of the practice of seeing - and believing in - race, and reveals that our troublesome faith in the details discerned by the discriminating glance is widespread and very popular. In so doing, he upends the possibility of a postracial society by revealing how deeply race is embedded in our culture, with implications that are often matters of life and death.

$43.63

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 248
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: University North Carolina Pr
Published: 30 Aug 2015

ISBN 10: 1469626519
ISBN 13: 9781469626512

Media Reviews
[A] splendid treatment of racialized imagery in popular culture. . . . Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.--Choice


Illustrates how race continues to operate as subtext in the world of ideas, coloring our expectations and, more important, our personal and political decisions.--Chronicle of Higher Education


Seeing Race is primarily a modern expose of race in popular culture.--North Carolina Historical Review


An engaging read. . . . A general audience would appreciate this engaging and topical book, while U.S. Historians will appreciate Guterl's take on how race is depicted in popular culture.--Journal of Southern History


Open[s] up questions that will no doubt shape future inquiry in the field of race and visual culture studies for years to come.--American Literary History Online Review


This rigorous and insightful book provides a careful investigation on an often overlooked topic.--Publishers Weekly


The book's greatest strength: its ability to open up discussion and enliven rather than limit debate.--Journal of American History


Guterl's evidence throughout is compelling, his writing and analysis is crisp and clear, and his visual examples are powerful--if not stunning.--American Quarterly

Author Bio
Matthew Pratt Guterl is professor of Africana Studies and American Studies at Brown University, USA and is the author of American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation among other books.