Research Catalog

Title

The culture of yellow, or, The visual politics of late modernity / Sabine Doran.

Author

Doran, Sabine.

Publication

New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 208 pages, 8 unumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color); 22 cm

Summary

This is the first book to explore the cultural significance of the color yellow, showing how its psychological and aesthetic value marked and shaped many of the intellectual, political, and artistic currents of late modernity. It contends that yellow functions during this period primarily as a color of stigma and scandal. Yellow stigmatization has had a long history: it goes back to the Middle Ages when Jews and prostitutes were forced to wear yellow signs to emphasize their marginal status. Although scholars have commented on these associations in particular contexts, Sabine Doran offers the first overarching account of how yellow connects disparate cultural phenomena, such as turn-of-the-century decadence (the "yellow nineties"), the rise of mass media ("yellow journalism"), mass immigration from Asia ("the yellow peril"), and mass stigmatization (the yellow star that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany). The Culture of Yellow combines cultural history with innovative readings of literary texts and visual artworks, providing a multilayered account of the unique role played by the color yellow in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and European culture.

Alternative Title

Visual politics of late modernity

Subjects

• Politics and culture
• Color in literature
• Color in art
• Symbolism of colors
• Yellow

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Van Gogh's yellow -- The scandal of yellow books: From the yellow nineties to modernism -- Yellow passions -- "The little patch of yellow wall": Proust -- The "yellow peril" and the visual politics of race -- Yellow stars and the visual politics of genocide.

ISBN

• 9781441184443
• 1441184449
• 9781441185877 (pbk.)
• 1441185879 (pbk.)

OCLC

827777607

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library