The Fruits of Empire is a history of American expansion through the lens of art and food. In the decades after the Civil War, Americans consumed an unprecedented amount of fruit as it grew more accessible with advancements in refrigeration and transportation technologies. This excitement for fruit manifested in an explosion of fruit imagery within still life paintings, prints, trade cards, and more. Images of fruit labor and consumption by immigrants and people of color also gained visibility, merging alongside the efforts of expansionists to assimilate land and, in some cases, people into the national body. Divided into five chapters on visual images of the grape, orange, watermelon, banana, and pineapple, this book demonstrates how representations of fruit struck the nerve of the nation’s most heated debates over land, race, and citizenship in the age of high imperialism.
Price: $65.00
Pages: 264
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Series: California Studies in Food and Culture
Publication Date:
13 October 2020
Trim Size: 10.00 X 7.00 in
ISBN: 9780520296398
Format: Hardcover
“Richly illustrated and supported with meticulous research, The Fruits of Empire demonstrates the essential need to understand the history and politics behind our food consumption. In the midst of a national reckoning with racism in the United States generally and in the arts specifically, we as art historians need to use our scholarly platforms to raise consciousness about the racist and nativist origins of our national visual culture. As Klein’s book deftly demonstrates in the context of the fruit industry, images matter. But, as she also argues, so do Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Latinx lives.”
Shana Klein is Assistant Professor of Art History at Kent State University. She is the recipient of several research fellowships from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, American Council of Learned Societies, Henry Luce Foundation, and Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, among others.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Westward the Star of Empire: California Grapes and Western Expansion
2. The Citrus Awakening: Florida Oranges and the Reconstruction South
3. Cutting Away the Rind: A History of Racism and Violence in Representations of Watermelon
4. Seeing Spots: The Fever for Bananas, Land, and Power
5. Pineapple Republic: Representations of the Dole Pineapple from Hawaiian Annexation to Statehood
Conclusion: New Directions in Scholarship on Food in American Art
Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
