Typecasting

by EWEN, STUARTEWEN, ELIZABETH

• ISBN13: 9781583227763
• ISBN10: 1583227768
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2008-04-01
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Summary

"Fascinating. . . . a terrific volume that will be eye-opening to academics and -general readers alike."- Publishers Weekly "In Typecasting, two ace historians offer a profound and sweeping study of the most every-day, often unconscious, forms of prejudice. [It's] bound to make you think-and think again."-Barbara Ehrenreich "With great wit and dark irony, the Ewens remind us that modern culture has been a sinkhole of pseudo-scientific stereotype and racial hallucination. Few books so properly deserve the title of required reading."-Mike Davis "An absolute 'must-have' for sociology shelves, enthusiastically recommended for public and college libraries alike."- Midwest Book Review In this monumental work of popular history, Elizabeth and Stuart Ewen vividly expose the pivotal developments that have made stereotypes a persistent, common language. Moving across centuries and continents in thirty eloquent vignettes, the authors not only illuminate the incubation of modern stereotypes in the halls of science and aesthetics but also trace their materialization in the popular imagination. Drawing upon sources as diverse as museum archives, popular magazines, and film, the authors reveal how stereotypes have served as the groundwork for power in the modern world.

Author Biography

EWEN & EWEN is an authorial sobriquet assumed by Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen in no particular order. Elizabeth Ewen is Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of American Studies at SUNY College at Old Westbury. Stuart Ewen is CUNY Distinguished Professor of Film & Media Studies at Hunter College and in the Ph.D. Programs in History and Sociology at The CUNY Graduate Center.

Table of Contents

The First Divide
Male and Female Created He Them	p. 3
The Return of the Repressed	p. 23
First We Define and Then We See
Didot's Invention	p. 51
Created Equal	p. 59
Visual Truth	p. 63
Curiosity Cabinets	p. 71
Taxonomies of Human Difference
Physiognomy: The Science of First Impressions	p. 85
Hierarchies of Humanity	p. 99
Camper's Angle	p. 109
Tablier Rasa	p. 123
Spurzheim's Funeral	p. 141
Crania Americana	p. 149
An American Tale	p. 163
The Pencil of Nature	p. 191
Facial Politics	p. 209
The Costermonger's Tongue and Roget's Thesaurus	p. 223
The Faces of Degeneration
Identifying the Group Within the Individual	p. 241
Finding the Individual Within the Group	p. 253
Criminal Types	p. 265
Nordic Nightmares
The Amazing Race	p. 287
Morons in Our Midst	p. 309
Eugenics Goes to the Fair	p. 343
Modern Battlegrounds of Type
Dat Famous Chicken Debate	p. 357
Writing History With Lightning	p. 387
Movable Types	p. 401
Persistence of Vision	p. 423
Tales of Before and After	p. 439
Coda	p. 459
Notes	p. 463
Bibliography	p. 483
Index	p. 499
About the Authors	p. 524
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.