The American Library Association has just named the companion book for For All the World to See a Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2010, in the category of Art and Architecture!
Here is Choice's Full Citation:
Berger, Maurice. For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Yale/Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland Baltimore County/National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian, 2010. 207p index afp; ISBN 9780300121315, $39.95. Outstanding Title! Reviewed in 2010sep CHOICE.
In this compelling, insightful book, cultural historian and art critic Berger (Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County) underscores the myriad ways that images in advertising, film, photojournalism, and television fashioned and fortified the modern civil rights movement from the early 1950s to the mid 1970s. Echoing cultural critic bell hooks's assertion that the struggle for black liberation was a battle for both visual and political representation, Berger demonstrates how civil rights leaders fought to replace century-old caricatures of doting mammies, entertaining dandies, and exotic primitives with positive portrayals of modern, self-assured, and successful citizens. Analyzing representations of race in the news and entertainment industries, Berger shows how black leaders orchestrated media events to rouse African Americans to action and compel European Americans to confront the realities of racism. He underscores how popular film and television programs both supported and undermined these aims. Berger's incisive examination into the visual culture of American race relations will cause readers to look anew--quite literally--at the civil rights movement and to grasp the power of images to transform American life. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. -- K. A. Schwain, University of Missouri--Columbia