About faces : physiognomy in nineteenth-century Britain / Sharrona Pearl.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pearl, Sharrona, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Physiognomy--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Physiognomy.

Face perception--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Face perception.

Facial expression--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Facial expression.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (303 pages)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : Harvard University Press, [2010]

Summary:

Federalism is regarded as one of the signal American contributions to modern politics. Its origins are typically traced to the drafting of the Constitution, but the story began decades before the delegates met in Philadelphia. In this groundbreaking book, Alison LaCroix traces the history of American federal thought from its colonial beginnings in scattered provincial responses to British assertions of authority, to its emergence in the late eighteenth century as a normative theory of multilayered government. The core of this new federal ideology was a belief that multiple independent levels of government could legitimately exist within a single polity, and that such an arrangement was not a defect but a virtue. This belief became a foundational principle and aspiration of the American political enterprise. LaCroix thus challenges the traditional account of republican ideology as the single dominant framework for eighteenth-century American political thought. Understanding the emerging federal ideology returns constitutional thought to the central place that it occupied for the founders. Federalism was not a necessary adaptation to make an already designed system work; it was the system. Connecting the colonial, revolutionary, founding, and early national periods in one story reveals the fundamental reconfigurations of legal and political power that accompanied the formation of the United States. The emergence of American federalism should be understood as a critical ideological development of the period, and this book is essential reading for everyone interested in the American story.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Face Facts

Chapter 1. Pocket Physiognomy: Sense in the City

Chapter 2. Performing Physiognomy: Imitating Art and Life

Chapter 3. Portrait Physiognomy: Communicating Character

Chapter 4. Caricature Physiognomy: Imaging Communities

Chapter 5. Photographic Physiognomy: Through a Mediated Mirror

Chapter 6. Diagnostic Physiognomy: From Phrenology to Fingerprints

Conclusion: Seeing Ourselves

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780674054400

0674054407

OCLC:

1256251765