Education and Training
Ph.D., American Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT
M.Phil. & M.A., American Studies, Yale University
B.A., English and Art History, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
Research Interests
Martin A. Berger’s work explores the role played by the visual arts in identity formation. Making use of an eclectic assortment of primary evidence, including painting, photography, architecture, film and literature, he analyzes how Americans both resist and embrace dominant norms of identity. While specifically concerned with the impact of identity formation on disempowered peoples, his scholarship consistently addresses the role of art in representing the identities of our society’s most privileged members. In other words, instead of focusing on how images impact our sense of what it means to be “feminine” or “black,” he explores how they condition our understanding of being “masculine” and “white.”
Concerned that the historical emphasis of scholars on representations of disempowered peoples has inadvertently reinforced the perception that empowered identities are fixed, or even natural, he illuminates their constructed and fluid nature. Because the identity of blacks, for example, has long been defined in opposition to that of whites, it is clear that privileged racial categories must play a significant role in impacting the lived experiences of people of color. People of color are ultimately harmed by racial norms and expectations that disadvantage them, but also by racial values that confer unearned advantages to whites.
His recent book, Sight Unseen, explores how racial identity guides the interpretation of the visual world. Through a careful analysis of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century paintings, photographs, museums, and early motion pictures, he illustrates how a shared investment in whiteness invisibly guides what European-Americans see, what they accept as true, and ultimately, what legal, social, and economic policies they enact.
Selected Publications Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005).
Man Made: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000).
Teaching Interests
Berger teaches a range of thematic courses on U.S. and European art and culture, which loosely mirror his research interests. Particular courses examine the construction of gender, race, class, sexuality, consumer culture and nationalism. Little concerned with students mastering a particular canon of art, Berger works instead to provide them with new conceptual frameworks for understanding the links between representation and social power.
Recent Courses Taught: America in Art
Victorian America
Impressionism to Pop: Art in Modern Culture
The “Real” in America
Race and American Visual Arts
Image and Gender
Readings in Visual Culture
