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Reviews
Reviews
Engaging and entertaining... Using illustrations, cartoons and photographs from the past three centuries, Wosk delineates shifts in social acceptance of women's relationship to technology. Typewriters, spinning wheels, sewing machines and household appliances are all given their due, as are bicycles, cars and airplanes. But there are intriguing asides, too, like the technology of women's corsets, bustles and hoops... With the sleek detail of a gift book, Wosk's history may look deceptively slight, but her work is complex, comprehensive and highly readable.
Women and the Machine presents a wealth of information on the intersections of women with technology and machinery. Covering a wide period of time, her work presents a fascinating array of information... Wosk's assessment of the challenges faced by women in the supposedly masculine world of machines is a highly readable and excellent source book on the issues, bringing together a great deal of research that plays among the disciplines of art history, visual culture, gender studies, and sociology... A satisfying and fascinating read.
Art historian Wosk analyzes the overt and covert messages in depictions of women and machines in an array of fiction and, more impressively, in some 150 visual images... Examining a wide range of advertisements, fashion stories, cover illustrations, and photographs, Wosk contrasts images of women as fearful of machinery and scientific technology in general with others showing mastery and control, thereby illustrating gender stereotyping and the hesitant advances women have made in a supposedly male domain.
A fascinating and informative blending of social history and art.
A delightful book framed by captivating illustrations that support and enrich the text... Wosk demonstrates that cultural attitudes about women and their mechanical abilities are complex, contradictory, and conflicted in the past and present.
Reveals deep cultural tensions over the role of women in a technologically complex society... Wosk's elegant visual history reads as a prelude to the computer age.
This is a serious book written by a serious art historian, with 150 images from high and low European and American art, from advertising, photography and satirical reviews.
Julie Wosk's fine detective work, uncovering powerful images of historical representations of technology, makes a significant contribution to the literature on technology and society.
Two things about this book stand out. The first is that when you can personalize an academic volume, it's a good book. The second is that Women and the Machine offers a profoundly feminist point of view that isn't buried in academic jargon... Full on target.
The book... make[s] a strong case for women's fascinating and changing relationship with the machine, from the spinning wheel to the sewing machine to the microwave oven.
An engaging study of the ways women and machines have been represented in art, photography, advertising, and literature.
About
Book Details
Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
8
x 10
Pages
352
ISBN
9780801877810
Illustration Description
43 color illus., 118 b&w illus.
Table of Contents
Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Framing Images of Women and Machines
2 Wired for Fashion: Images of Bustles, Corsets, and Crinolines in the Mechanical Age
3 The Electric Eve
4 Women and the Bicycle
Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Framing Images of Women and Machines
2 Wired for Fashion: Images of Bustles, Corsets, and Crinolines in the Mechanical Age
3 The Electric Eve
4 Women and the Bicycle
5 Women and the Automobile
6 Women and Aviation
7 Women in Wartime: From Rosie the Riveter to Rosie the Housewife
Coda: The Electric Eve and Late-Twentieth-Century-Art
Notes
Index
