Thy Phu: Picturing Model Citizens

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" vlink="#CC0000" alink="#CC0000"><center><hr width="350" size="1" align="center" noshade>How images portraying Asians as civil subjects contribute to debates on Asian American citizenship<hr width="350" size="1" align="center" noshade><p><a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/ChicagoBook.aspx?ISBN=9781439907207&&PRESS=temple" target="_top">Buy this book!</a> | <a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/Cart.aspx?PRESS=temple" target="_top">View Cart</a> | <a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/Cart.aspx?PRESS=temple" target="_top">Check Out</a></p><p><img src="1518_reg.gif" height=200 border=1 vspace=4></p></center><h1>Picturing Model Citizens</h1> <H2>Civility in Asian American Visual Culture</H2> <h3>Thy Phu</h3> <P>cloth 1-4399-0720-X $86.50, May 12, <FONT COLOR=#990033>Available</FONT> <br>paper 1-4399-0721-8 $28.95, May 12, <FONT COLOR=#990033>Available</FONT> <br>Electronic Book 1-4399-0722-6 $28.95 <FONT COLOR=#990033>Available</FONT> <BR> 218 pp 6.125x9.25 42 halftones </P><BLOCKQUOTE><I>"</i>Picturing Model Citizens<i> is a valuable contribution to the growing scholarship on Asian America and visual culture. Phu articulates a subtle and very useful trope of ‘civility’ by which to account for the chasm between the demonized coolie and idolized model minority, between labor and citizenship. This theorization and a well-grounded deployment of visual culture, enables sophisticated close readings of several important sets of photographs in which Asian American subjects are featured. Phu’s extensive contextualization and detailed and sophisticated readings of the photographs are rewarding and generative. </I>Picturing Model Citizens<I> is likely to be widely used and cited." </I><br>&#151<b>Robert G. Lee</b>, American Studies Department, Brown University, and author of <I>Orientals</I> (Temple)</I></BLOCKQUOTE> <P>At the heart of the model minority myth—often associated with Asian Americans—is the concept of civility. In this groundbreaking book, <i>Picturing Model Citizens</i>, Thy Phu exposes the complex links between civility and citizenship, and argues that civility plays a crucial role in constructing Asian American citizenship. <P>Featuring works by Arnold Genthe, Carl Iwasaki, Toyo Miyatake, Nick Ut, and others, <i>Picturing Model Citizens</i> traces the trope of civility from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Through an examination of photographs of Chinese immigrants, Japanese internment camps, the Hiroshima Maidens project, napalm victims, and the SARS epidemic, Phu explores civility's unexpected appearance in images that draw on discourses of intimacy, cultivation, apology, and hygiene. She reveals how Asian American visual culture illustrates not only cultural ideas of civility, but also contests the contradictions of state-defined citizenship. <BR> <h2>Excerpt</h2><P>Excerpt available at <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress">www.temple.edu/tempress</a></p> <BR> <h2>Reviews</h2> <p><I>"In </I>Picturing Model Citizens<I>, Thy Phu ranges across a century of photographs and shows how, time after time, the vexed relationship between civility and citizenship is at the heart of pictures of Asian Americans. From studio portraits to pictorialist street photography, from internment camp pictures to images surrounding the SARS epidemic, civility becomes, in her skillful hands, photography's unconscious. This is a fascinating read."</I><br>&#151<b>Anthony W. Lee</b>, Department of Art History, Mount Holyoke College, and founding editor of the series <I>Defining Moments in American Photography</I> <BR> <h2>Contents</h2><P> <p>Acknowledgments <br>Prologue <br>Introduction: Clasped Hands and Clenched Fists <br>1. Spectacles of Intimacy and the Aesthetics of Domestication <br>2. Cultivating Citizenship: Internment Landscapes and Still-Life Photography <br>3. A Manner of Apology: Transpacifism and the Scars of Reparation <br>4. Racial Hygiene: SARS, Surgical Masks, and the Civility of Surveillance <br>Postscript: The Inhospitable Politics of Repatriation <br>Notes <br>Bibliography <br>Index </P><BR> <H2>About the Author(s)</H2> <P><b>Thy Phu</b> is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Western University. She is editor of the Americas region for the journal <i>Photography and Culture</i>, and co-editor (with Elspeth Brown) of a collection of essays entitled <i>Feeling Photography</i>.</P> <BR><H2>Subject Categories</H2> <p><A HREF="/tempress/asian_amer.html" TARGET="_top">Asian American Studies</a> <BR><A HREF="/tempress/art.html" TARGET="_top">Art and Photography</a> <BR><A HREF="/tempress/american.html" TARGET="_top">American Studies</a> </p> <p align="center"><a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/ChicagoBook.aspx?ISBN=9781439907207&&PRESS=temple" target="_top">Buy this book!</a> | <a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/Cart.aspx?PRESS=temple" target="_top">View Cart</a> | <a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/Cart.aspx?PRESS=temple" target="_top">Check Out</a></p><p><font face="Arial" size="1"><a href="copyright.html" onMouseOver="window.status='Web Copyright Policy';return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''" title="Web Copyright Policy">©</a> 2013 <a href="http://www.temple.edu" target="new" onMouseOver="window.status='Link to Temple University home page';return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''" title="Link to Temple University home page">Temple University</a>. 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