"Fascinating.a terrific volume that will be eye-opening to academics and general readers alike."-Publishers Weekly "In Typecasting, two ace historians offer a profound and sweeping study of the most everyday, often unconscious, forms of prejudice. [It's] bound to make you think-and think again."-Barbara Ehrenreich
"With great wit and dark irony, the Ewens remind us that modern culture has been a sinkhole of pseudo-scientific stereotype and racial hallucination. Few books so properly deserve the title of required reading."-Mike Davis
"An absolute must-have' for sociology shelves, enthusiastically recommended for public and college libraries alike."-Midwest Book Review
In this monumental work of popular history, Elizabeth and Stuart Ewen vividly expose the pivotal developments that have made stereotypes a persistent, common language. Moving across centuries and continents in thirty eloquent vignettes, their extraordinary journey not only uncovers the incubation of modern stereotypes in the halls of science and aesthetics but traces their materialization in the popular imagination. Their detective work in museum archives, popular magazines, and film uncovers how stereotypes have served as the groundwork for power in the modern world.
Elizabeth Ewen is the distinguished teaching professor of American studies at SUNY, Old Westbury. Stuart Ewen is the CUNY distinguished professor of film and media studies at Hunter College and in the PhD programs in history and sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Together, they are the co-authors of three books and individually have authored more than a dozen. They live in New York City.
Typecasting chronicles the emergence of the "science of first impression" and reveals how the work of its creators--early social scientists--continues to shape how we see the world and to inform our most fundamental and unconscious judgments of beauty, humanity, and degeneracy. In this groundbreaking exploration of the growth of stereotyping amidst the rise of modern society, authors Ewen & Ewen demonstrate "typecasting" as a persistent cultural practice. Drawing on fields as diverse as history, pop culture, racial science, and film, and including over one hundred images, many published here for the first time, the authors present a vivid portrait of stereotyping as it was forged by colonialism, industrialization, mass media, urban life, and the global economy.
