Also in caa.reviews, Katherine Manthorne considers ($) Kirsten Pai Buick’s Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject:

[This book is Buick's] anticipated full-length examination of this sculptor’s career. It is a thoughtful, groundbreaking study that should be a must-read for anyone interested in art of the United States and in a nuanced treatment of race, ethnicity, and gender. Buick’s book challenges late twentieth-century identity politics of current art history that maddeningly continue to insist that black or Native American or women artists reproduce their race and gender in their work … Buick situates her subject within the culture that shaped and instructed her in the cultures of “True Womanhood” and of “Sentiment.” But most of all, she reinserts her into the context of nineteenth-century American art, devoid of any hyphenated qualifier….

Contained within Buick’s reinterpretation of Lewis is a critique of, or at least a dialogue with, the field of art history itself … This is something that is definitely missing these days; the lively debates and disputes that used to pepper conferences and Letters to the Editors are now replaced with more politically correct and neutral comments … I find this willingness to take on one’s predecessors a refreshing breath of fresh air. Art historians need to recapture some of this give and take, as we shape the field for a new century and a new generation of scholars.

Read more: http://arthistorynewsletter.com/blog/?p=5409