Citizen Spectator

“Eye-opening, original, and provocative, Citizen Spectator recasts early national citizenship as a politicization of the senses. A fascination for optical illusions in art and science tested Americans' ability to discern authenticity from deception. Bellion proves just how important that test was in the early republic. She reminds us of its importance still.”—Joseph Roach, Yale University

“Bellion shows that deceptive illusions were not mere diversions for the citizens of Philadelphia circa 1800 but were embedded in the Enlightenment pursuit of rationality and anxieties about republican politics. These insights bring a fascinating array of artifacts into focus.”—Michael Leja, University of Pennsylvania

“With its careful contextualization and detailed, historical analysis of the cultural forms of illusion, this book firmly locates its discussion of early national visuality within the cultural practices of everyday life and thus makes a substantial contribution to the empirical history of spectatorship in the United States.”—American Historical Review

“Bellion is a skilled expositor of images, and each of her essays leaves us with a deeper understanding of works we might imagine were plumbed long ago.”—Journal of American History

“A dramatic and delightful exercise in undeceiving. . . . [Bellion’s] work will have broad appeal beyond art historians to historians of early American as well as literary and cultural scholars.”—William and Mary Quarterly

“This magisterial book explores the objects and environments that shaped vision and citizenship in early America. From magic lantern shows to solar microscopes, trompe l'oeil paintings to printed views of Philadelphia, Wendy Bellion considers a wide range of cultural productions.”—Early American Literature

“Admirable and groundbreaking . . . . Significant both for its extensive research into the culture of spectatorship in Philadelphia and for the ways in which it opens up further modes of inquiry for scholars interested in the Early National period.”—Association of Historians of American Art

“An adept analysis of visual phenomenology and political ideology, Bellion’s book provides an important model for work on the relationship between eighteenth-century art and politics while inevitably inviting many questions.”—Eighteenth Century Studies

“Lavishly illustrated, Citizen Spectator makes an original and persuasive argument for the importance of visual perception to the culture of the early republic. Like the objects it studies, it shows that looking can be both a pleasure and serious business.”—Journal of the Early Republic

“Among the most significant book-length studies of early American art to appear in print during the past decade.”—Common-Place