Visibly Canadian: Imaging Collective Identities in the Canadas, 1820-1910

Description

Spectacular, scientific, and educational cultural practices were used to establish and define public identities in the British colonies of nineteenth-century Canada. In Visibly Canadian, Karen Stanworth argues that visual representations were the era's primary mode of expressing identity, and shows how the citizenry of Quebec and Ontario was - or was not - represented in the visual culture of the time. Through nine case studies, each representing key moments of identity formation and contestation, Stanworth investigates how a broad range of cultural phenomena, from fine arts to institutional histories to public spectacles, were used to order, resist, and articulate identities within specific social and economic contexts. The negotiation and planning underpinning civic culture are evident in rare moments of compromise such as the surprising proposal from the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society to merge their annual parade with the celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Equally astounding is the scale of nineteenth-century public spectacles; reenactments of Victorian scenes of war often attracted crowds of upwards of 10,000 people. Illustrated with over fifty images, many unseen for over a century, Visibly Canadian establishes the extraordinary significance of artwork and public spectacles in cutting across language, religion, and class to tell stories of nationhood, belonging, and difference. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Colour plates Introduction: Visual Culture: Practices and Methodologies PART ONE: Visibly Ordered: Mid-Nineteenth-Century Museums and the Colonial Order of Things 1 A Picture of Quebec: Artifacts of Civilization 2 A Laboratory of Learning: The Educational Museum, Visual Culture, and Citizenship in Canada West 3 Whose Lessons? Subjects of the Colonial Archive PART TWO: Visibly Public: Spectacularizing Social Identities in Victorian Canada 4 Staging a Siege: Or, the Cultural Politics of Re-Producing Modern History 5 Bilingual Memories: A Souvenir of the Diamond Jubilee in Quebec City, 1897 6 “The Body Corporate Gets a Wriggle On”: The Civic Parade in Montreal, 1897 PART THREE: Visibly Related: Small Group Portraiture and the Display of the Social Self 7 “Born with a Silver Spoon and Fork”: Photographic Testimonies of Acculturation, Montreal, 1873 8 The Family Portrait: Portrait of the Artist as a Successful Man 9 Visual Rhetoric: Storytelling, History, and Identity in a Portrait of Three Friends Postscript Illustration Credits Notes Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Z