The Familiar Made Strange: American Icons and Artifacts after the Transnational Turn

In The Familiar Made Strange, twelve distinguished historians offer original and playful readings of American icons and artifacts that cut across rather than stop at the nations borders to model new interpretive approaches to studying United States history. These leading practitioners of the transnational turn pause to consider such famous icons as John Singleton Copleys painting Watson and the Shark, Alfred Eisenstaedts photograph V-J Day, 1945, Times Square, and Alfred Kinseys reports on sexual behavior, as well as more surprising but revealing artifacts like Josephine Bakers banana skirt and William Howard Tafts underpants. Together, they present a road map to the varying scales, angles and methods of transnational analysis that shed light on American politics, empire, gender, and the operation of power in everyday life.