Mumler’s Spirit Photographs, Visual Culture, Rhetoric and the Sanctioning of Imagination, Dec. 4

Event: Cara Finnegan, associate professor of speech communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will present “The Mumler Spirit Photographs Trial: Visual Culture, Rhetorical Response, and the Sanctioning of Imagination.”

Her presentation will discuss “Spirit Photography,” which was started by William Mumler, the nineteenth century photographer who captured the images of departed spirits as faint, ghostly images floating beside living subjects.

When: 2-3:30 p.m., Dec. 4, 2007

Where: CMA 5.160 LBJ Room

Background: Finnegan is a rhetorical critic, historian and theorist whose current research explores the role of photography in U.S. rhetorical history. Her book Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA Photographs (Smithsonian, 2003) explored the role of 1930s magazines in circulating government photographs of poverty. She is concerned with understanding the ways in which photographs, by virtue of seeming to be natural, “real” slices of life, conceal their own persuasive appeals. She currently is writing a book on the role of photography in American politics between 1890 and 1940.

Contact:
Dana L. Cloud
(512) 471-1947
dcloud@mail.utexas.edu