American Visual Culture by Mark Rawlinson (review)

Reconsidering material once offered as proof positive of America’s exceptional qualities as a sign of its constructedness, American Visual Culture successfully reveals the confusing and often contradictory foundation of American identity while forcing scholars of all disciplines to reevaluate how they read their sources. Along the way Rawlinson does visual culture studies an important service, using familiar theoretical approaches from a potpourri of other disciplines to present new interpretations of familiar images from American history. The result is an introductory text that establishes the potential, if not the necessity, of visual culture to the future development of all disciplines.