Gender On Ice: American Ideologies of Polar Expeditions: 0010 (American Culture) - Softcover

Bloom, Lisa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816620938 ISBN 13: 9780816620937

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1993

Synopsis

In this work, the author focuses on the conquest of the North Pole as she reveals how popular print and visual media, including photography and video, defined and shaped American national ideologies from the early 20th century to the present. She goes on to analyze gendered and racial constructions and idioms of American identity by examining the powerful and continuing cultural investment in the legacy of the so-called discovery of the North Pole in 1909, and the ongoing celebration of white explorers, such as Robert Peary, as "heroes". Her analysis of the polar expedition opens up contemporary questions in cultural studies about gender, race, male sexuality and social relations of science. Bloom demonstrates how the North Pole's literal emptiness made polar expedition appear in the dominant media as an intrinsically pure field of knowledge, rather than a form of colonial discourse. She portrays the National Geographic Society as a magazine and institution that tied itself to the national image of the United States in the early 20th century and seized the poles and polar expeditions as a metaphor for modernity and progress. By focusing on the development and legitimation of an American national discourse and identity that excludes women and people of colour, "Gender on Ice" offers a significant contribution to current debates on multiculturalism.

About this title

About the Author

Lisa Bloom is the legal analyst for The Today Show, NBC News, and Avvo.com. A daily fixture on American television for the last decade, Lisa regularly appears on CNN, HLN, and MSNBC. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Swagger and Think, and she has written numerous articles for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, The National Law Journal, CNN.com, The Daily Beast, and others. She lives in Los Angeles where she runs her law firm, The Bloom Firm.

From the Back Cover

'In this book, Bloom takes what might seem a very localized subject and shows how it opens up to all the central questions today in cultural studies around gender, nationhood, the politics of imperialism, race, male homosocial behavior, and the sociality of science. Gender on Ice has an eloquence and elegance that positively refreshing and the prose is stylish, engaging, and direct.' -Dana Polan, University of Pittsburgh

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0816620938
• ISBN 13: 9780816620937
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176