ABOUT THIS BOOK
Surveys the representations and constructions of the human being in American art.
 
Humans are organisms, but “the human being” is a term referring to a complicated, self-contradictory, and historically evolving set of concepts and practices. Humans explores competing versions, constructs, and ideas of the human being that have figured prominently in the arts of the United States. These essays consider a range of artworks from the colonial period to the present, examining how they have reflected, shaped, and modeled ideas of the human in American culture and politics. The book addresses to what extent artworks have conferred more humanity on some human beings than others, how art has shaped ideas about the relationships between humans and other beings and things, and in what ways different artistic constructions of the human being evolved, clashed, and intermingled over the course of American history. Humans both tells the history of a concept foundational to US civilization and proposes new means for its urgently needed rethinking.
 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Laura Bieger, professor of American studies, political theory, and culture at the University of Groningen, is the author of Belonging and Narrative and Ästhetik der Immersion. Joshua Shannon, professor of contemporary art history and theory at the University of Maryland, is the author of The Recording Machine and The Disappearance of Objects. Jason Weems is associate professor of American art and visual culture at the University of California, Riverside, and is the author of Barnstorming the Prairies and curator of Interrogating Manzanar.