The American Stamp Postal Iconography, Democratic Citizenship, and Consumerism in the United States

Goldblatt, Laura/ Handler, Richard

ISBN 10: 0231208243 / ISBN 13: 9780231208246

Published by Columbia Univ Pr, 2023

About this Item

349 pages. 9.25x6.25x1.00 inches. In Stock.

Seller Inventory # __0231208243

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The American Stamp Postal Iconography, Democratic Citizenship, and Consumerism in the United States
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231208243
• ISBN 13: 9780231208246
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Brand New
• Weight: 0.67 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

More than three thousand different images appeared on United States postage stamps from the middle of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth. Limited at first to the depiction of a small cast of characters and patriotic images, postal iconography gradually expanded as the Postal Service sought to depict the country’s history in all its diversity. This vast breadth has helped make stamp collecting a widespread hobby and made stamps into consumer goods in their own right.

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. They argue that postage stamps, which are both devices to pay for a government service and purchasable items themselves, embody a crucial tension: is democracy defined by political agency or the freedom to buy? The changing images and uses of stamps reveal how governmental authorities have attempted to navigate between public service and businesslike efficiency, belonging and exclusion, citizenship and consumerism. Stamps are vehicles for state messaging, and what they depict is tied up with broader questions of what it means to be American.

Goldblatt and Handler combine historical, sociological, and iconographic analysis of a vast quantity of stamps with anthropological exploration of how postal customers and stamp collectors behave. At the crossroads of several disciplines, this book casts the symbolic and material meanings of stamps in a wholly new light.

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.