Departments

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visual culture

  • SOURCE: Mother Jones
    6/10/2021

    How the George Floyd Uprising Was Framed for White Eyes

    Some of the most iconic news photographs of the Civil Rights Movement told a particular story to white liberals – that Black protesters were passive victims needing their help, instead of actively fighting for freedom. Those photos today help define the mainstream limits of "acceptable" protest. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
    12/1/2020

    The Struggle to Document COVID-19 for Future Generations

    by Pamela Ballinger

    Images of suffering have been powerful spurs to humanitarian action in history, but the process has the potential to reinforce messages of fault, blame, and separation. Assembling a visual archive of the age of COVID must avoid those traps to be useful in the future. 

  • SOURCE: Society for U.S. Intellectual History
    9/9/2020

    The Interdisciplinarity and Influence of Alan Trachtenberg

    by Jennifer Giuliano and Lauren Tilton

    "The need to interrogate, understand, and even disrupt how we see images is a part of Trachtenberg’s enduring legacy that becomes more important as researchers are distanced from physical archives." The work of Alan Trachtenberg in developing historical methodologies for understanding images is crucial for historians' ability to speak to current affairs.