Virginia Henry
Virginia Henry
College of Wooster
Participant in the 2011 ACM Student Symposium on Off-Campus Study
Reading the Faces: Portraiture as a Means to Investigate Representational Containment of Native Americans
"Take one young Indian maiden — sensually arranged in the heart of paradise, costumed in blatant signifiers of Indian stereotypes, alone, serious, unidentified, and idealized. Mix it up. Add one pudgy, middle-aged woman — erotically posed on the hood of junky car, wearing a T-shirt and slippers, mugging for the camera, laughing, and giving no hint of a generalized Indian persona, but instead fiercely asserting individual personhood. Shaken and stirred, beaten and baked, stick it in your mind’s oven and let it simmer. Pull it out. What have you got?"
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At left: Video of Virginia Henry's presentation at the Symposium.
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I plan to discuss the paper I wrote while studying in the Newberry Seminar for the Humanities. The paper is titled, "Reading the Faces: Portraiture as a Means to Investigate Representational Containment of Native Americans." I argue that portraits of Native Americans help to illustrate and code Euro-American/Native relations and Native identity. A discussion involving portraits by Western Euro-American artists and contemporary Native artists reveals a few ways that Natives have responded to Euro-American actions, policies, and ideologies supporting the universal containment of Native people.
- For more about Virginia Henry, read the article "Newberry Library is a Perfect Match for Student's Love of Research and Writing."
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