Books by Shawn Michelle Smith

Visual texts demonstrate the contested terms of American identity. This book offers an account of how photography and the sciences of biological racialism joined forces in the nineteenth century to offer an idea of what Americans look like - or 'should' look like.

An exploration of the visual meaning of the color line and racial politics through the analysis of archival photographs collected by W.E.B. Du Bois and exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1900