The Technology of Drawing
Image and Industry in the Early United States
$74.09
- Hardcover
264 pages
- Release Date
14 December 2026
Summary
A richly illustrated study of how technical drawing shaped culture in the early United States.
With The Technology of Drawing, Elizabeth Bacon Eager explores the importance of manual skill and graphic literacy in the emergence of American industry, offering readers a new lens through which to view the visual culture of the early United States. Focused on questions of materiality and process, the book traces the development of drawing as a technology and argue…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226851235 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0226851230 |
| Author: | Elizabeth Bacon Eager |
| Publisher: | The University of Chicago Press |
| Imprint: | University of Chicago Press |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 264 |
| Release Date: | 14 December 2026 |
| Weight: | 454g |
| Dimensions: | 178mm x 254mm |
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Critics Review
“With The Technology of Drawing, Eager considers a fascinating and significantly understudied set of images that are integral for understanding not only art making, but also communication, building and industry, (dis)possession of land, ownership of ideas, the construction of subjectivity, and gendered and racialized identities in the early republic. In Eager’s important work, drawing emerges as fundamental for the key processes of nation and identity formation: citizenship (and its denial), claiming of land, development of industry, and the literal construction of the nation’s architectural fabric.”
– Jennifer Van Horn, University of Delaware“This deeply researched, ambitious, and highly engaging book offers a fresh art historical account of how drawing operated as a ‘technology’ in the early years of the American republic. Eager argues that the United States ‘drew itself into existence,’ and she explores this claim through detailed examination of a delightfully unexpected set of protagonists, sites, and objects. Paying careful attention to the material practices of drawing and revealing striking archival materials, this makes an exciting contribution to histories of American art and of science.”
– Stephanie O’Rourke, University of St. AndrewsElizabeth Bacon Eager
Elizabeth Bacon Eager is a scholar of American art and material culture. Her research has appeared in such journals as Panorama: The Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, The Art Bulletin, and Journal18.
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