Collecting Objects/Excluding People: Chinese Subjects and American Visual Culture, 1830-1900

Collecting Objects/Excluding People: Chinese Subjects and American Visual Culture, 1830–1900
Collecting Objects/Excluding People: Chinese Subjects and American Visual Culture, 1830–1900
Contents
Illustrations and Credits
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One: The Politics of Chinoiserie: The Disappearance of Chinese Objects
	Section I. The Early Nineteenth Century
		1. The Presence of Chinese Objects in the United States
		2. Opium, Politics, and American Perceptions of the Chinese
		3. The Chinese in the United States
		4. Americans Assess China’s Artistic Ability
		5. The Influence of the Chinese Aesthetic on American Art
	Section II. The Late Nineteenth Century
		1. Regarding “Oriental”: Whose Aesthetic Is It?
		2. American Confusion of Japanese and Chinese Objects
		3. Politicized Perceptions of the Chinese
		4. Politics Become Aesthetic Criteria
Chapter Two: The Power of Inaction: Chinese Objects and the Transformation of the American Definition of Art
	Section I. Chinese Objects and the Aesthetics of Museums
		1. Aesthetic Morality and Nationalism, America’s Ruskin-Based Art
		2. The Educational Premise: Inaugurating Two American Art Museums
		3. Expanding the Canon of Art; Plaster Casts as an Art Form
	Section II. Chinese Objects and the Business of Museums
		1. Art Museums Founders and the Issue of the Public
		2. Museums, Art, and Commodities
		3. Merchandising Art
		4. The Change of Paradigm
Chapter Three: From Class to Race: The New York Times Reconstructs “Chinese”
	Section I. A Brief Historical Contextualization
		1. Introduction
		2. Newspaper History and The New York Times
		3. A Glance at History of Labor, Politicians, and Anti-Chinese Agitation
	Section II. Creating a “Them”: The Strategies of Demonization
		1. Part Becomes the Whole: Turning Chinese into Coolies
		2. Hordes
		3. Heathen
		4. Barbarity and Contamination
		5. Sex and Drugs
		6. Ignorance
		7. Effeminizing the Chinese Man
		8. Chinese into Coolies into Demonized Race
	Section III. Defining the “Us”
		1. The Exclusion Debate: Four Voices Struggle Over Imaging Chinese
		2. The Opposing Race Arguments from the Congressional Debates
		3. The Times Doublespeak: Blame California, Profess Fatigue
		4. The Chinese View through Word and Action
Chapter Four: The Chinese of the American Imagination: Nineteenth-Century Trade Card Images
	Section I. Trade card images
	Section II. The Politics of Chromolithography
		1. Power Struggles Over Definitions of Art
		2. Between Two Worlds: The Dual Role of Trade Cards
		3. An Addition to Visual Language: Floating Signifiers
	Section III. The Chinese Figure as Outsider
		1. Dislodged Objects as a New Art
		2. Paper Nations
		3. The Safety of Exotic Distance
	Section IV. The Chinese Figure and American Self-Definition
		1. American, Un-American
		2. Disjunctions, and Collisions: The Iconography of Displacement
		3. Hybridity, Cultural Margins, and Incorporation
Conclusion
Notes
Name Index
Subject Index