Henrickson, L orcid.org/0000-0001-8008-2373 (2019) Scenarios of countercultural representation: an analysis of inventory books’ visualities. Visual Communication. ISSN 1470-3572
Abstract
This article explores the social implications of the page layouts of ‘inventory books’, a series of non-fiction mass-market paperbacks published during the 1960s and 70s that employed eccentric printing strategies characterized primarily by a proliferation of imagery and nonlinear text layout and argumentation. Inventory books all use text and imagery in unique ways, appearing to include visual cultural references with connotative value that would have appealed to readers’ understandings of self and society. Drawing from scholarship from medieval, visual and literary studies, this article argues that inventory books’ visualities represented and affirmed the countercultural movements of 1960s/70s America. They did so by accentuating each individual reader’s power for meaning-making and by (figuratively and literally) turning conventional reader expectations upside-down. Not only do inventory books reflect their contexts of production, but they also serve to establish and perpetuate contemporary readers’ senses of connection with countercultural identities.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Keywords: | 1960s; counterculture; cultural citizenship; society; United States of America; the visual; visual culture |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Media & Communication (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 19 Oct 2020 15:06 |
Last Modified: | 10 Mar 2023 15:22 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/1470357219877560 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:166826 |