Syllabus and Schedule of Activities

2025 Summer Seminar in Historic American Visual Culture

Nineteenth-Century American Photography in the World

Pre-reading: Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982). [Entire] 
Pre-viewing: “Searching the AAS General Catalog” (YouTube). Please watch the following sections before the seminar:

  1. Five Things to Know about the AAS Catalog
  2. Anatomy of a Catalog Record
  3. Finding Digital Surrogates
  4. MARC View
  5. Wildcard Searches

Sunday, July 27: 
Arrival

  • 4:00-4:30 Introduction from Scott Casper (AAS President)
  • 4:30-5:30 Tour of library
  • 5:30-6:00 Participant introductions
  • 6:00-7:30 Reception with dinner (Goddard-Daniels House)

Monday, July 28: 
Intro to American Photo History and Processes

  • 9:00-10:30 Library Registration and Meet the AAS Curators (bring 2 forms of ID) (Learning Lab)

  • 10:30-11:30 Lecture and Discussion: intro to straight and revisionist social histories of 19th C American photography (Monica and Emily) (LL)

    Readings:

    1. Mary Warner Marien, selection from “Survey History of Photography,” in Grove Art Guide to Photography, ed. Tanya Sheehan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 3-23.

    2. Alan Trachtenberg, “Photography and Social Knowledge,” American Art 29, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 5-8.

    3. Alan Trachtenberg, prologue to Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Hill and Wang, 1980), 3-20.

    4. Monica Bravo and Emily Voelker, “Re-Reading American Photographs,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 6, no. 2 (Fall 2020), https://doi.org/10.24926 /24716839.10844.

    5. Ariella Azoulay, “Unlearning the Origins of Photography,” Still Searching…, Fotomuseum Winterthur, June 9, 2018, https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/2018/09/06/unlearning-the-origins-of-photography/.

  • 11:30-12:30 Lecture and Discussion: photographs in collections / discursive spaces (Emily and Monica) (LL)

    Readings:

    1. Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Stereoscope and the Stereograph,” The Atlantic, June 1859

    2. Rosalind Krauss, “Photography’s Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View,” Art Journal 42, no. 4 (Winter 1982): 311-318.

    3. Douglas Crimp, “The Museum’s Old / The Library’s New Subject,” (1981) The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, ed. Richard Bolton (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), 3-14.

  • 12:30-1:30 Lunch (GDH)
  • 1:30-3:00 Collections Workshop: intro to themes and technical photo history (Monica and Emily) (LL)
  • 3:00-3:30 Break
  • 3:30-4:00 Presentation: photographic care and treatments (Marisa Maynard, AAS Library and Archives Conservator)

  • 4:00-4:45 Collections Workshop: photomechanical processes and identification (Christine Morris, Associate Curator of Graphic Arts) (LL)

    Reading:

    Anthony W. Lee, “Antietam Sketches and Photographs, 1862,” in Getting the Picture: The Visual Culture of the News, eds. Jason E. Hill and Vanessa R. Schwartz (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 26-31.

    Evening assignment: each participant to submit requests for 2-3 collections items for independent study.

Tuesday, July 29: 
Diasporic Communities

  • 9:00-10:30 Lecture and Discussion: transpacific migration (Monica) (LL)

    Readings:

    1. Monica Bravo, ““Mercury is a Messenger: Photography’s Dependence on Quicksilver and Mining Labor,” American Art 39, no. 1 (Spring 2025): 16-25.

    2. Anthony W. Lee, introduction to A Shoemaker’s Story: Being Chiefly about French Canadian Immigrants, Enterprising Photographers, Rascal Yankees, and Chinese Cobblers in a Nineteenth-Century Factory Town (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 1-11.

    3. Lily Cho, Ch. 6 “Anticipating Citizenship: Chinese Head Tax Photographs,” in Feeling Photography, eds. Elspeth Brown and Thy Phu (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 158-176.

    4. LiLi Johnson, “Paper Family Photography: Photography and the State in the Era of Chinese Exclusion (1882-1943),” Photography and Culture 10, no. 2 (July 2017): 105-119.

  • 10:30-11:00 Coffee/tea break (GDH) – Deadline to submit requests for independent study.

  • 11:00-12:30 Lecture and discussion on Black photography and the vernacular image (Emily and Monica) (LL)

    Readings:

    1. Frederick Douglass, “Pictures and Progress,” an address delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 3, 1861.

    2. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Frederick Douglass’s Camera Obscura,” Vision & Justice: A Civic Curriculum, ed. Sarah Lewis (New York: Aperture, 2019), 12-15.

    3. Darcy Grigsby, “Negative-Positive Truths,” Representations 113, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 16-38.

    4. Deborah Willis and Barbara Krauthamer, introduction to Envisioning Emancipation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013), 1-24.

    5. Shawn Michelle Smith, “Feeling Family Photography: A Cautionary Note,” Photography and Culture 10, no. 2 (July 2017): 165-166.

    6. Optional: Cheryl Finley, Ch. 11 “No More Auction Block for Me!” in Pictures and Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity, eds. Maurice O. Wallace and Shawn Michelle Smith (Duke: Duke University Press, 2012), 329-346.

  • 12:30-1:30 Lunch (GDH)
  • 1:30-3:00 Collections Workshop: viewing session for transpacific and African diaspora (LL)
  • 3:00-3:30 Break

  • 3:30-4:45 Guest Lecture and Discussion (Makeda Best) (LL)

    Reading:

    Makeda Best, introduction to Elevate the Masses: Alexander Gardner, Photography, and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020), 1-18.

    Heather Cox Richardson, "Spring 1865: The View from the Civil War," and "1865-1867: The Future of Free Labor," in West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 8-77.

  • 7:00-8:00 AAS virtual book talk [optional]: Whiskerology: The Culture of Hair in Nineteenth-Century America, with Sarah Gold McBride. Register for Zoom webinar: https://www.americanantiquarian.org/node/13161

Wednesday, July 30: 
Transatlanticism and Indigenous Sovereignty

  • 9:00-10:30 Lecture and Discussion: Indigenous sovereignty and photography from diplomatic portraiture to performance (Emily) (LL)

    Readings:

    1. François Brunet, “Introduction: No Representation without Circulation,” in Circulation: Terra Foundation Essays, Volume 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 10-39.

    2. Emily Voelker and Erin Hyde Nolan, “Reading Across American & Ottoman Archives: Diplomacy and Photography in the Nineteenth Century,” Transatlantic Cultures: Cultural Histories of the Atlantic World 18th-21st centuries, Digital Humanities Project (Paris: Paris-Saclay, Sorbonne Nouvelle, and São Paulo Universities, 2021). https://transatlantic-cultures.org/es/catalog/photographic-album

    3. Wendy Red Star and Shannon Vittoria, “Apsáalooke Bacheeítuuk in Washington, DC: A Case Study in Re-Reading Nineteenth-Century Delegation Photography,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 6, no. 2 (Fall 2020), https://doi.org/10.24926/24716839.10672.

    4. Jolene Rickard, “Visualizing Sovereignty in the Time of Biometric Sensors,” South Atlantic Quarterly 110, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 465-486.

  • 10:30-11:00 Coffee/tea break (GDH)
  • 11:00-12:30 Collections Workshop: viewing session related to morning lecture (LL)
  • 12:30 -1:30 Lunch and Overview of AAS Fellowship program with Nan Wolverton (GDH)

  • 1:30-3 Collections Workshop: lecture and viewing session with Sarah Sense (LL)

    Readings:

    1. Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, “When Is a Photograph Worth a Thousand Words?,” in Photography’s Other Histories, eds. Christopher Pinney and Nicholas Peterson (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003): 40-52.

    2. Sarah Sense, I Want to Hold You Longer (New York: Bruce Silverstein Gallery, 2024).

    3. Lisa Robertson-Dziedzic, “Story Weaver,” Casino Player Magazine (March 2024), 47-49.

  • 3-4:45 Independent research and preparation for student presentations: time for individual consultations (Reading Room)

  • 6:00 Pizza at the Goddard Daniels House

    Evening assignment: Students submit 1 PowerPoint slide to Dropbox for Friday presentations

Thursday July 31: 
Transpacific Trade Networks

  • 9:15 Gather outside library for bus to Peabody Essex Museum
  • 11:00-12:30 Visit PEM permanent installation with Karen Kramer: On This Ground: Being and Belonging in America
  • 12:30-1:30 Lunch at PEM
  • 1:30 Bus to Rowley collection center

  • 2:00-4:00 View selections from PEM special collections with Stephanie Tung

    Readings:

    1. Stephanie H. Tung and Karina H. Corrigan, introduction to Power and Perspective: Early Photography in China (Salem, Mass: Peabody Essex Museum, 2022), 19-27.

    2. Stephanie H. Tung, Bing Wang, and Karina H. Corrigan, “The Making and Marketing of Photography in Nineteenth-Century China,” in Power and Perspective: Early Photography in China (Salem, Mass: Peabody Essex Museum, 2022), 142-163. 

    3. Stephanie H. Tung, “Being & Becoming: Asian in America,” Aperture 251 (Summer 2023): 24-29.

  • 4:00 Return bus to Worcester
  • 7:00 Deadline to upload PowerPoint slide to Dropbox

Friday August 1: 
Wrapping Up

  • 9:00-10:30 Concluding Discussion and Participant Presentations (LL)
  • 10:30-10:45 Comfort break
  • 10:45-12:30 Participant Presentations (LL)
  • 12:30-1:30 Lunch (GDH)
  • 1:30-3:00 Participant Presentations (LL)
  • 3:00 Departures or additional time in the Reading Room