Conference - Destined for Men: Visual Materials for Male Audiences, 1750 - 1880 (Worcester, MA; Oct. 16-17)

With presentations on caricatures and other illustrations, this conference might be of interest to comics scholars.

Destined for Men:
Visual Materials for Male Audiences,
1750 - 1880

October 16-17, 2009
American Antiquarian Society
Worcester, Massachusetts

Through the emergence of women's studies programs in academic institutions in the past generation or two, many aspects of women's lives have been documented through publications and academic courses. The third conference of the Center for Historic American Visual Culture focuses not on women but on men. Looking at examples of visual materials of and for men is a way to look at a different gendered audience. In the literature on American graphic materials, little has been written about the audience for historical images. The papers presented at this conference begin to address this need.

The presentations by scholars from a variety of disciplines address images of the male body, public portraiture, prints and illustrations for male audiences, boxing, erotica, using drawings as examples of friendship among men, and men and fashion advertisements. Speakers include curators, librarians, historians, art historians, and literary scholars.

Joshua Brown, executive director of the American Social History Project, located in the Graduate Center of The City University of New York, will present "Catching His Eye: The Sporting Male Pictorial Press in the Gilded Age," the Twenty-Seventh James Russell Wiggins Lecture in the Program in the History of the Book in American Culture at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, October 16.

Between the final session and the Wiggins Lecture, there will be time to view selected materials from the graphic arts collection in the Council Room in Antiquarian Hall

For the schedule of presentations, see the conference website, which is also the source for the illustration above.