Although nineteenth-century American landscapes typically were painted from a high vantage point; looking down from above; southern landscapes that featured plantations diverged from this convention in telling ways. Portraits of planters' landholdings were often depicted from a point below the plantation house; a perspective that directs the viewer's gaze upward and; as John Vlach observes; echoes the deference and respect the planter class assumed was its due. Moreover; Vlach notes; slaves were rarely represented in plantation paintings made before the Civil War; although it was slave labor that powered the plantation system. After the war and the abolition of slavery; he argues; a wistful revisionism seems to have restored these people--still toiling in the service of the masters--to the landscapes they had created and on which they were so cruelly mistreated. This richly illustrated book explores the statements of power and ironic evasions encoded in plantation landscapes; focusing on six artists whose collective body of work spans the period between 1800 and 1935 and documents plantations across the South; from Maryland to Louisiana: Francis Guy; Charles Fraser; Adrien Persac; Currier Ives chief artist Fanny Palmer; William Aiken Walker; and Alice Ravenel Huger Smith.
#1230563 in Books Teachers College Press 2004-03Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 .56 x 6.40 x 9.00l; .65 #File Name: 0807744352192 pages
Review
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Finally a study of what happens in classroomsBy Harold MarcuseI've been teaching college courses on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust for over 10 years; and I've been studying how we teach about Nazi atrocities for much longer than that. During the past 20 years the amount of teaching material about the Holocaust has risen exponentially; and there was already a fair amount available before that. What Simone Schweber offers in this book are in-depth case studies of how master teachers use such teaching materials in their classrooms; and what results they achieve with their students.Schweber; now an education professor in Wisconsin; started out as an outreach coordinator who accompanied Holocaust survivors to classroom speaking engagements in California. For her Stanford dissertation she picked four popular or acclaimed high school teachers and sat through their entire courses or units about the Holocaust. She administered pre- and post-surveys to all students in those classes; and selected four students in each class for in-depth interviews. And she interviewed the teachers; who also read her analyses of their courses.We end up with detailed descriptions of (the names are self-chosen pseudonyms): "Mr. Jefferson's fact race;" a well-delivered information-only unit; Mr. Zee's touchy-feely never-mind-the-facts adaptation of the "Facing History and Ourselves" curriculum; Ms. Bess's adaptation of the 1976 simulation game "Gestapo" to achieve surprisingly powerful results; and Mr. Dennis's use of highly participatory dramatic staging (of the story of Anne Frank; among other things) to achieve similarly deep learning among his students.Although the book contains a remnant of a dissertation's worry about its broad use of the term "morality;" it contributes more to our understanding of the moral implications of teaching about the Holocaust (now mandated in many of the US states) than the platitudes about "never again" or "tolerance" that fill the many; many curricular materials I've studied.I rate this a "must read" for any history teacher who takes teaching about the Holocaust or other genocides seriously.
