Summoning Pearl Harbor by Alexander Nemerov

Summoning Pearl Harbor by Alexander Nemerov

Summoning Pearl Harbor is a mesmerizing display of linguistic force that redefines remembering. How do words make the past appear? In what way does the historian summon bygone events? What is this kind of remembering, and for whom do we recall the dead, or the past?

In this highly original meditation on the past, renowned art historian Alexander Nemerov delves into what it means to recall a significant event- Pearl Harbor-and how descriptions of images can summon it back to life. Beginning with the photo album of a former Japanese kamikaze pilot, which is reproduced in this volume, Nemerov transports the reader into a different world through his engagement with the photographs and the construction of a narrative around them. Through its lyrical prose, Summoning Pearl Harbor expands what we traditionally associate with ekphrastic writing. The kind of writing that can enliven a work of art is also the kind of writing that makes the past appear in vivid color and deep feeling. In the end, this timely piece of writing opens onto fundamental questions about how we communicate with each other, and how the past continues to live in our collective consciousness, not merely as facts but as stories that shape us. Here, Nemerov's constant awareness of the power of language to make an experience - seen or remembered - become real reminds us that great ekphrastic writing is at the heart of every effective description.

Ann M. Wolfe is the Andrea and John C. Deane Family Senior Curator and Deputy Director at the Nevada Museum of Art, where her work focuses on art and environment with an emphasis on the American West. She is the author of Tahoe (2015), The Altered Landscape (2011), and Suburban Escape (2006). Susan Ehrens is an art historian, independent curator, and author who has researched and lectured widely on the work of California Pictorialist photographers. Alexander Nemerov, Phd is Department Chair & Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University. A scholar of American art, his most recent books are Silent Dialogues: Diane Arbus and Howard Nemerov (2015), Wartime Kiss: Visions of the Moment in the 1940s (2013) and Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War (2010). Kathleen Pyne, PhD, is a professor emerita of Art History at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Modernism and the Feminine Voice: O'Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle (2007) and Art and the Higher Life: Painting and Evolutionary Thought in Late Nineteenth-Century America (1996). Heather Waldroup is a professor at Appalachian State University.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781941701652
ISBN 10	1941701655
Title	Summoning Pearl Harbor
Author	Alexander Nemerov
Series	Ekphrasis
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	David Zwirner
Year published	2017-11-02
Number of pages	80
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.