“American” Pictures and (Trans-)National Iconographies: Mapping Interpictorial Clusters in American Studies

Abstract

Udo J. Hebel examines the recent critical history of visual cultures in American Studies in his essay “‘American’ Pictures and (Trans-)National Iconographies: Mapping Interpictorial Clusters in American Studies,” focusing his analysis specifically on “political photography” and the concurrency of contexts that inform his reading of the history of US presidential images. This beautifully researched article, previously published in American Studies Today: New Research Agendas (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2014), takes up questions related to “tensions” between disciplinary concerns and transdisciplinary potentialities for interpreting the representation of the political inside the framework of transnational American Studies.

Keywords

• american studies
• transnational
• political photography
• visual culture