Imagery of Lynching

"In concise and compelling language, Dora Apel traces the origins and histories of images of lynching in order to foreground their role in both normalizing and challenging particular concepts o racial and national identity. She forces us to look at scenes most would prefer to ignore, and exposes the horror and logic of torture. At a time when grotesque deaths are increasingly framed as 'entertainment' by today's news media, Apel's book is a sober reminder of the political expediency and personal pain behind such graphic displays.”

-- Frances K. Pohl * author of Framing America: A Social History of American Art *
"Apel has written an important book. It synthesizes the history of spectacle lynching and dissects the photographs and artworks used to sustain and challenge racial violence. It contributes to understanding the symbolic and ideological power of these images for past--and present. Imagery of Lynching is a must read for anyone interested in racial violence in the United States." * The Journal of American History *
"Apel has written a very engaging study on a difficult part of American visual history. She has succeeded in using a case study format to thoroughly address the breadth of social, political, and economic issues that have affected lynching and its representation in the last century....Apel offers astute analyses of an array of documentary and fine art images, revealing how they have reflected and influenced American attitudes about race, racism, sexuality, mob violence, and their pathology....Highly recommended."  * Choice *
"The visuals in Imagery of Lynching are disturbing and graphic, but deserve the reader's attention. Apel painstakingly and effectively discusses the strength of these images and details the controversies that often followed their public displays."  * The Historian *

"This book makes a major contribution to the scholarship on both lynching and the artistic representation of racism in the United States. It will undoubtedly be a foundational work for subsequent research by historians and art historians alike.”

-- Fitz Brundage * author of Under Sentence of Death and Lynching in the New South *
"[Apel's] book provides an important complement to social and political studies of lynching that generally ignore the role of the artist in attempting--however futilely--to awaken the public conscience."  * Southern Historical Association *

"Dora Apel mounts a careful and convincing analysis of a set of extremely difficult, often literally terrifying, images and provides the necessary contexts for readers to understand the practice of lynching and the terms of its representation by photographers and artists.”

-- Richard Meyer * author of Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American A