Title In the looking glass : mirrors and identity in early America / Rebecca K. Shrum

Published Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017

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Description 1 online resource Contents The evolving technology of the looking glass -- First glimpses : mirrors in seventeenth-century New England -- Looking glass ownership in early America -- Reliable mirrors and troubling visions : nineteenth-century white -- Understandings of sight -- Fashioning whiteness -- Mirrors in black and red -- Epilogue Summary "In the Looking Glass explores how mirrors shaped human identity in North America from the earliest European explorations through the nineteenth century. Early Americans--African, Native, and European--had uses for and beliefs about reflective surfaces, largely associating reflection with ritual and magic, which predated the introduction of accurately reflective mirrors (ca. 1500). These new mirrors played a critical role in shaping a person's individual sense of self and came to be intimately linked to identity formation in early America. Moreover, mirrors became an object through which white men asserted their claims to modernity, emphasizing mirrors as fulcrums of truth that enabled them to know and master themselves and their world. In claiming that mirrors revealed and substantiated their own enlightenment and rationality, white men sought to differentiate how they used mirrors from not only white women but also from Native American and African American men and women. Mirrors thus played an important role in the construction of early American racial and gender hierarchies. This project brings together the history of technology and the history of identity, using textual, visual, and material sources to focus on how mirrors were created, adopted, adapted, and discussed by a wide variety of early Americans. In the Looking Glass will attract a wide audience of scholars from history, African American studies, Native American studies, material studies, history of technology, and gender studies, as well as a broader audience concerned with questions of image and identity"--Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Mirrors -- Social aspects -- United States -- History Identity (Psychology) -- Social aspects -- United States -- History Race awareness -- United States -- History Sex role -- United States -- History Technology -- Social aspects -- United States -- History Material culture -- United States -- History HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- General. Identity (Psychology) -- Social aspects Manners and customs Material culture Race awareness Sex role Social conditions Technology -- Social aspects SUBJECT United States -- Social life and customs -- To 1775. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140528 United States -- Social life and customs -- 1775-1783. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140531 United States -- Social life and customs -- 1783-1865. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140532 United States -- Social conditions -- To 1865. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140512 Subject United States Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9781421423135 1421423138 1421423138

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