Agnes Lugo-Ortiz

Angela Rosenthal

Slave Portraiture in the Atlantic World is the first book to focus on the individualized portrayal of enslaved people from the time of Europe's full engagement with plantation slavery in the late sixteenth century to its final official abolition in Brazil in 1888. While this period saw the emergence of portraiture as a major field of representation in Western art, 'slave' and 'portraiture' as categories appear to be mutually exclusive. On the one hand, the logic of chattel slavery sought to render the slave's body as an instrument for production, as the site of a non-subject. Portraiture, on the contrary, privileged the face as the primary visual matrix for the representation of a distinct individuality. Essays address this apparent paradox of 'slave portraits' from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, probing the historical conditions that made the creation of such rare and enigmatic objects possible and exploring their implications for a more complex understanding of power relations under slavery.

Slave Portraiture in the Atlantic World

One of the most accomplished and internationally celebrated artists of the eighteenth century, Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) established her reputation with sensitive portraits as well as ambitious history paintings. This major study explores the artist's work and career by considering how Kauffman reconciled the public and presumed masculine pursuit of painting with her role as woman artist and arbiter of private taste. Featuring a wealth of new information, this illustrated book demonstrates Kauffman's role in shaping European visual culture, shedding new light on the history of women artists and on art history as a critical discipline.

Art and Sensibility

Angelica Kauffman

David Bindman

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, this collection - which gathers scholars in the fields of race, ethnicity, and humor - seems especially urgent. Inspired by Denmark's Muhammad cartoons controversy, the contributors inquire into the role that racial and ethnic stereotypes play in visual humor and the thin line that separates broad characterization as a source of humor from its power to shock or exploit. The authors investigate the ways in which humor is used to demean or give identity to racial, national, or ethnic groups and explore how humor works differently in different media, such as cartoons, photographs, film, video, television, and physical performance. This is a timely and necessary study that will appeal to scholars across disciplines.

Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality, and Ethnicity

No Laughing Matter

The first book to focus on the individualized portrayal of enslaved people from the late sixteenth century to abolition in 1888.

Angela Rosenthal

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