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Examining the canon of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American stamps, Laura Goldblatt and Richard Handler show how postal iconography and material culture offer a window into the contested meanings and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship.
List of contents
Introduction
Part I: Mailing, Collecting, Cataloguing
1. The Postal Infrastructure of Democratic Citizenship
2. Creating Post-postal Value: Stamp Collecting
3. U.S. Stamps: Cataloguing Polities and Framing National Culture
Part II: Storied Ancestors
4. Fixing the Iconography of National Ancestry: Dead Heads and Moving Bodies During the U.S. Civil War
5. Mining History and Marketing Stamps at the World’s Fairs
6. The People in the Postal Polity: Twentieth-Century Definitive Stamps and the Iconography of Democratic Inclusion
Part III: The Stamp of Neoliberalism
7. Postal People: From Industrial Labor, Black Power, and Social Service to Cartoon Citizenship
8. Segregating Stamps: From White Definitives to Racialized Commemoratives
9. How to Do Things with Stamps, Part I: First-Day Covers
10. How to Do Things with Stamps, Part II: Shooting the Moon
Conclusion: Postal Circulation and Citizenship at the End of the American Century
Acknowledgments
Appendix: How Many People Collect Stamps in the United States?
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Laura Goldblatt is an assistant professor of English at the University of Virginia.
Richard Handler is professor of anthropology and global studies at the University of Virginia.
Summary
Examining the canon of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American stamps, Laura Goldblatt and Richard Handler show how postal iconography and material culture offer a window into the contested meanings and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship.
