| Description |
1 online resource |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
United States -- Social life and customs -- To 1775.
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United States. |
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Manners and customs. |
| Chronological Term |
To 1775 |
| Subject |
United States -- Social life and customs -- 1775-1783.
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| Chronological Term |
1775-1783 |
| Subject |
United States -- Social life and customs -- 1783-1865.
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| Chronological Term |
1783-1865 |
| Subject |
United States -- Social conditions -- To 1865.
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Social conditions. |
| Chronological Term |
To 1865 |
| Subject |
Mirrors -- Social aspects -- United States -- History.
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Mirrors. |
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Social aspects. |
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History. |
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Identity (Psychology) -- Social aspects -- United States -- History.
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Identity (Psychology) -- Social aspects. |
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Race awareness -- United States -- History.
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Race awareness. |
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Sex role -- United States -- History.
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Sex role. |
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Technology -- Social aspects -- United States -- History.
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Technology -- Social aspects. |
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Material culture -- United States -- History.
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Material culture. |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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History.
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| Subject |
Gender roles. |
| Other Form: |
Print version: Shrum, Rebecca K. (Rebecca Kathleen), 1972- In the looking glass. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017 9781421423128 (DLC) 2016046947 (OCoLC)965781449 |
| ISBN |
9781421423135 (electronic book) |
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1421423138 (electronic book) |
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1421423138 (electronic) |
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9781421423128 |
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142142312X |
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