Benjamin Franklin and the Sartorial Identity of Early America: 2
In 1776, Benjamin Franklin arrived in France charged with the mission of acquiring assistance for the American Revolution from the French monarchy. This choice was not made without purpose as Franklin was well known in France as a man of genius, the discoverer of electricity, a direct descendant of thinkers and scientists like Newton and Galileo. Franklin projected an image of Quaker simplicity, an identity that not only did not wholly represent himself but also catered to the French’s preconceived ideas of America. This paper explores how Franklin used dress and fashion to propagate a somewhat disingenuous image of himself and of American culture as a whole. The Treaty of Alliance that he orchestrated directly impacted the early republic’s own evolving national and sartorial identity. This paper also highlights the effect that dress can have in a shifting political environment, particularly in France where luxury and social hierarchy could be determined by the company you kept and the clothes you wore. The early republic’s sartorial identity was conflicted for on one hand, homespun clothing represented patriotism and commitment to the revolution, on the other hand luxury goods and emulation of French fashion signaled access to Europe’s lifestyle and status.
Benjamin Franklin and the Sartorial Identity of Early America: I
In 1776, Benjamin Franklin arrived in France charged with the mission of acquiring assistance for the American Revolution from the French monarchy. This choice was not made without purpose as Franklin was well known in France as a man of genius, the discoverer of electricity, a direct descendant of thinkers and scientists like Newton and Galileo. Franklin projected an image of Quaker simplicity, an identity that not only did not wholly represent himself but also catered to the French’s preconceived ideas of America. This paper explores how Franklin used dress and fashion to propagate a somewhat disingenuous image of himself and of American culture as a whole. The Treaty of Alliance that he orchestrated directly impacted the early republic’s own evolving national and sartorial identity. This paper also highlights the effect that dress can have in a shifting political environment, particularly in France where luxury and social hierarchy could be determined by the company you kept and the clothes you wore. The early republic’s sartorial identity was conflicted for on one hand, homespun clothing represented patriotism and commitment to the revolution, on the other hand luxury goods and emulation of French fashion signaled access to Europe’s lifestyle and status.
Borat in the Age of Digital Inauthenticity
Parafiction, as coined by Carrie Lambert-Beatty in 2009, is fiction that intersects with lived experiences, and is “experienced as fact”. While Lambert-Beatty uses this lens to examine various performance art pieces, she mentions Sacha Baron Cohen as a cultural touchstone for her audience to understand her concept but does not analyse his work in any depth. The structure of this essay will use Borat and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm as both case studies and temporal bookends to look at the rise of parafictive works in digital spheres. When Borat came out in 2006, there was little in mainstream media that it could be compared to. With the release of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm in 2020, we are a culture inundated with parafictive works, and as such we experience the parafictive in a way that would not be possible in 2006.
A Picture Worth A Thousand Words:
This brief article discusses how Queen Victoria (1819-1901) and Empress Dowager Cixi of China (1835-1908) used photography and photo editing in similar ways, in order to promote a specific image of themselves to both their people and other countries, as both ideal women and ideal rulers. The physical photos themselves served as useful political tools that these women used to their advantage.
“Testimonies of Rank and Character”:
Swords are often valued today as works of art and as the belongings of famous individuals, but these objects can also provide a deeper understanding of the time period in which they were created or used. The purpose of this research paper is to examine what values were transmitted by the ownership and wielding of blades, particularly as markers of genteel status. The swords studied in this paper were owned by American Revolutionary General John Brooks, and through an examination of his life and the matter in which blades were traditionally used, a connection between these weapons and masculine ideals can be traced. Ultimately it can be concluded that men had very personal relationships with their swords, even if they were not used in combat, as extensions of themselves. To the Early Americans, masculinity was associated with leading one’s family and bravery in combat. Likewise, blades were often associated with honor, as rewards for serving in the highest capacity and the embodiment of these ideals. Through both material culture and document analysis, this paper posits that swords were essentially a man’s military and political prowess in material form.
A Measured Response
What can a family cookbook from 1764 tell us about life in 18th century New England? Sarah Fayerweather’s receipt book was compiled in 1764 and passed down from generation to generation. These handwritten pages are not simply recipes frozen in time. They are a looking glass in which the careful observer can distinguish the nuances of New England’s colonial past. Scholars have focused primarily on published recipe books, but Fayerweather’s book reveals much about life in colonial New England, a world on the brink of revolution. Consider just three of the recipes it contains: one for rye and Indian meal cakes, another for ginger snaps, and an alleviant for abdomen pain. Through an analyzation of these three recipes, this personal receipt book provides an incisive study on the social, cultural, political, economic, and medical nuances that affected the daily lives of women in late-eighteenth-century Massachusetts.
The Female Body as Commodity:
The work of iconic Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha has long been a source of fascination for its appealing aesthetic qualities, yet there has been little in the way of critical analysis of his work. Considering that Mucha is most famous for the commercial posters he produced around the turn of the century, all of which featured a woman as their subject, this results in a gap in the academic literature that overlooks the fact that it is arguably the women who are the real “product” being advertised. This paper focuses on one of Mucha’s iconic posters, the 1896 poster for JOB cigarette papers, the first of two Mucha produced. It argues that femininity is performed in Mucha’s poster the way that Judith Butler describes in her article “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” as the female subject wears modernity like a skin and performs freedom without truly being a liberated woman.
After contextualizing Mucha’s JOB poster in the social and economic climate of fin de siècle Paris, this paper will speak to the complex role women played in nineteenth-century society, as companies were slowly beginning to advertise more specifically towards women, despite the persistent restrictions of patriarchal society.
To Walk Like an Egyptian:
The experience of coming to know the individuals of the past through their material culture displayed within museums offers an understanding distinctive from those of the individuals who used and created them. In discussing how closely the modern museum visitors experience with artefacts on display reflects one’s relationship with material in the past, the different analytical theories, museum contexts and visitors are considered. The complexities of these interpretations and presentations of the past are showcased in the material of ancient Egypt as its various exhibitions and popularity have influenced just how accurately one can come to understand past individual experiences.
Curating Controversy:
The Theodore Roosevelt Statue displayed outside the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City has long been a site of protest. Viewed as a symbol of white supremacy, the Roosevelt Statue depicts the former president high on a horse, literally raised above a Native American and an African. In 2018, a Mayoral Commission reviewed the work and the Mayor decided that the statue was to remain, but additional context was needed. The AMNH created an exhibit entitled Addressing the Statue. Following the 2020 protests regarding systemic racism in the United States, the museum and mayor finally decided to remove the sculpture. This article explores how the creation of AMNH, the creation of the field of anthropology, and Theodore Roosevelt’s life provide context about the statue and why it is associated with white supremacy. A brief overview is also given of the history of protests surrounding it, the Mayoral Commission, and the creation of the Addressing the Statue exhibition. The exhibition was flawed but began a further discussion about the sculpture. However, the 2020 protests confirmed to the museum and mayor that this controversial statue must go. The Roosevelt statue reflects the power of material culture and the visible legacy of white supremacy.
Beaded Soles:
Oftentimes indigenous objects in Western museums are displayed with little to no context, making them seem divorced from the presence of their community. This article engages with the Southern Cheyenne’s Child’s Moccasins on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition Art of Native America. By taking a critical approach to the exhibition practices, this article hopes to present a case for the embodiment of community within their display. With specific attention given to a visual analysis of the Child’s Moccasins, as well as a discussion of the generationality behind their creation, the article intends to broadly highlight possible ways of engaging with these objects in the museum space.
Imperialism, Identity, and Image:
This article explores how objects provenanced in once colonized territories carry a history of both its country of origin and its colonizing power. By evaluating the presentations of the Rosetta Stone from Egypt, a wampum belt from the United States, and the Throne of Maharaja Ranjit Singh from Pakistan, all of which are displayed in British institutions, this piece claims that tangible culture can create a necessary cognitive dissonance within their own historical identities. The British hegemony over these objects provides a conundrum for the presentation of their object biographies, namely that their later history in England takes precedence over their original history in their country of origin, reinforcing the identity of Imperial Britain and the power that it once held. The author utilizes theories of Orientalism, museum presentation, and the western conceptualization of heritage and historiography to argue that to create a full object biography of these pieces a complete picture of its full history must be presented, which is necessary for the fuller understanding of the object as it relates both to its place in history and its physical place in the museum.
