Writing with Light : Words and Photographs in American Texts

by Gidley, Mick

• ISBN13: 9783039115723
• ISBN10: 3039115723
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-12-30
• Publisher: Peter Lang Pub Inc

Summary

This book is an integrated collection of essays on the interface between literature and photography, as exemplified in important North American texts. The aspects of this increasingly debated topic treated here include: the evidential nature of the photographic image; evocations of photographs in poetry and fiction; ways in which photographs 'illustrate' literary works; the status and function of words in photographic anthologies; and the formal structure(s) of full-blown interactions of the verbal and the visual in works that constitute 'photo-texts'. Contributors to the volume probe ways of reading particular and often celebrated combinations of words and photographs as cultural documents of their time – and ours. Achieving a better understanding of their social context often illuminates important themes of American history, such as ethnic, regional, class or gender identification and difference.

Author Biography

Mick Gidley is Emeritus Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Leeds. He has taught at universities in both the United Kingdom and the United States, and in 2005 was the William Robertson Coe Distinguished Visiting Professor of American Studies at the University of Wyoming. He has been awarded fellowships by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, grants by bodies such as the AHRC and the Leverhulme Trust, and a life-time Honorary Fellowship by the British Association for American Studies. Widely published in American literary and cultural history, he has written extensively on Native American themes, including three books on Edward S. Curtis. His other publications include essays on Richard Avedon, E. O. Hoppe and Native American photography.