Associate Professor of Music Lydia Hamessley recently published two articles that feature stereoscopic images of musical instruments. The first, "Within Sight: Three-Dimensional Perspectives on Women and Banjos in the Late Nineteenth Century," 19th-Century Music 31 (2007): 131-63, focuses on the relationship between images of women playing banjos and depictions of the new woman.
During the last decades of the 19th century, women figured prominently in a marketing campaign by banjo manufacturers who sought to make the banjo a respectable instrument for ladies. Through an examination of the era's popular three-dimensional stereoviews, and drawing on late 19th century writing and poetry about the banjo, Hamessley examines how the banjo in the hands of the new woman became a cautionary cultural icon for middle- and upper-class women, subverting the respectable image of the parlor banjo and the bourgeois women who played it.
In the second article, "Double Vision: Banjos, Guitars, and Mandolins in Late 19th-century Stereoviews," Fretboard Journal 8 (2007): 108-14, Hamessley outlines the variety of ways these instruments were depicted in stereoviews that included domestic settings, Orientalist scenes, Irish wakes and dying miners. http://www.fretboardjournal.com/
Hamessley has collected stereoviews for 25 years, and her collections of these cards numbers more than 3000. She owns all the images used in the articles, and the photographs were prepared for publication by Hamilton College photographer Marianita Amodio.
During the last decades of the 19th century, women figured prominently in a marketing campaign by banjo manufacturers who sought to make the banjo a respectable instrument for ladies. Through an examination of the era's popular three-dimensional stereoviews, and drawing on late 19th century writing and poetry about the banjo, Hamessley examines how the banjo in the hands of the new woman became a cautionary cultural icon for middle- and upper-class women, subverting the respectable image of the parlor banjo and the bourgeois women who played it.
In the second article, "Double Vision: Banjos, Guitars, and Mandolins in Late 19th-century Stereoviews," Fretboard Journal 8 (2007): 108-14, Hamessley outlines the variety of ways these instruments were depicted in stereoviews that included domestic settings, Orientalist scenes, Irish wakes and dying miners. http://www.fretboardjournal.com/
Hamessley has collected stereoviews for 25 years, and her collections of these cards numbers more than 3000. She owns all the images used in the articles, and the photographs were prepared for publication by Hamilton College photographer Marianita Amodio.
