Contact us on (02) 8445 2300
For all customer service and order enquiries

Woodslane Online Catalogues

9780271083315 Academic Inspection Copy

The Spanish Element in Our Nationality

Spain and America at the World's Fairs and Centennial Celebrations, 1876-1915
  • ISBN-13: 9780271083315
  • Publisher: PENN STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: PENN STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By M. Elizabeth Boone
  • Price: AUD $217.00
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 13/02/2020
  • Format: Hardback 272 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: Photography & photographs [AJ]
Description
Table of
Contents
Reviews
Google
Preview

“The Spanish Element in Our Nationality” delves beneath the traditional “English-only” narrative of U.S. history, using Spain’s participation in a series of international exhibitions to illuminate more fully the close and contested relationship between these two countries.

Written histories invariably record the Spanish financing of Columbus’s historic voyage of 1492, but few consider Spain’s continuing influence on the development of U.S. national identity. In this book, M. Elizabeth Boone investigates the reasons for this problematic memory gap by chronicling a series of Spanish displays at international fairs. Studying the exhibition of paintings, the construction of ephemeral architectural space, and other manifestations of visual culture, Boone examines how Spain sought to position itself as a contributor to U.S. national identity, and how the United States—in comparison to other nations in North and South America—subverted and ignored Spain’s messages, making it possible to marginalize and ultimately obscure Spain’s relevance to the history of the United States.

Bringing attention to the rich and understudied history of Spanish artistic production in the United States, “The Spanish Element in Our Nationality” recovers the “Spanishness” of U.S. national identity and explores the means by which Americans from Santiago to San Diego used exhibitions of Spanish art and history to mold their own modern self-image.


List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Inventing America at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial
2 Defining (and Defending) Spain in Barcelona and Paris, 1888 and 1889
3 Marginalizing Spain (and Embracing Cuba) at the 1893 Columbian Exposition
4 Reasserting Spain in America at the 1910 Centennial Exhibitions
5 Using Spain to Ignore Mexicans at the 1915 California Fairs
Notes
Bibliography
Index
 
 
 
 
 

“A wonderfully detailed investigation of the shaping of Spain’s national-ethnic identity through several key international exhibitions with art in the United States and Latin America. Drawing upon unpublished archival sources, the engaging study analyzes the strategies of, and the international stakes for administrators, statespersons, and critics from different nations. This book offers readers an indispensable understanding of the politics of display in the creation and reception of these exhibitions.”

—Oscar E. Vázquez, author of The End Again: Degeneration and Visual Culture in Modern Spain

Google Preview content