Picturing Reform: How Images Transformed America, 1830-1880

The Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) facilitates the use and understanding of popular images by scholars and their students in many disciplines — American studies, history, art history, and literature. Sessions at this summer seminar will focus on the history of print production in the eighteenth and nineteenth  centuries; interpreting portrait paintings, prints, and photographs; "reading" illustrations in popular journals; and related topics.

Participants will also have access to the Society's varied collections of visual materials to pursue their own interests.

Masur will be joined by Lauren Hewes, the Andrew W. Mellon curator of graphic arts at the Society; Georgia Barnhill, CHAViC's director; David Jaffee, professor of early American history and material culture at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture; Jack Larkin, chief historian and museum scholar emeritus at Old Sturbridge Village; Joshua Brown, executive director, American Social History Project and professor of history, City University of New York; and Amy Richter, associate professor of history, Clark University.