American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture

"An imaginative, responsible, and very timely work. Shawn Michelle Smith brings into focus important connections between the development of photographic techniques and eugenic strategies in the articulation of a white middle-class identity. Her material explanation of how these cultural strategies came into existence is suggestive and exciting. This is a first-rate book that will be read widely in the fields of English and cultural studies, American studies, and women and gender studies."--Priscilla Wald, University of Washington

"A brilliant and important book. . . . The way it treats its visual evidence shows an eye so deeply schooled in American cultural history and so sensitive to the nuances and value of close reading that the visual material itself becomes transubstantiated into critical theory. I have been waiting for years for a book like this to come along."--Laura Wexler, Yale University