The Portrait's Subject

“With its rich archive and conceptual rigor, The Portrait’s Subject contributes to a vital body of Americanist scholarship . . . examining the visual practices that constellated around bodily difference. . . . Radiant and revelatory.”—New England Quarterly

“Energetic prose. . . . A perceptive account of the intermingling of science and cultural expression in the nineteenth century.” – Henry James Review

“Well written and powerfully argued. . . . [The Portrait’s Subject] encourages a rethinking of portraiture as a dynamic and active method rather than passive media through which to view content.”—American Literary History

“This is a theoretical book about a subject that is rarely theorized—portraiture. . . . She looks at how portraits became literary symbols in work by authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James. Identity politics also interests Blackwood, and she explores the meaning of portraiture for African Americans and women.”—CHOICE

“A fascinating and original study. Blackwood reconceives nineteenth-century portraiture as a method, not a genre, and specifically as a method through which understandings of self come into focus.”—Shawn Michelle Smith, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

“This compelling and beautifully written work demonstrates the interdependence of technology, aesthetics, and conceptual subject formation and its legacy for the contemporary moment.”—Priscilla Wald, Duke University