Shannon Egan

This dissertation offers a new, historically grounded analysis of Edward S. Curtis's 'The North American Indian,' a forty-volume set of photographs and writings published between 1907 and 1930. My study considers the significance of Curtis's project both as a work of photographic art and as an attempt to formulate and represent a specifically American cultural identity. I situate Curtis in relation to governmental policies affecting Native Americans and the development of American art in the 1910s and 1920s. I argue that Curtis's photographs present two distinct perceptions of Native Americans as part of a larger effort to construct and define an American culture, the first conception marked by Progressivism at the turn of the century and the second shaped by nativism in the 1920s.

This dissertation offers a new, historically grounded analysis of Edward S. Curtis's 'The North American Indian,' a forty-volume set of photographs and writings published between 1907 and 1930. My study considers the significance of Curtis's project both as a work of photographic art and as an attempt to formulate and represent a specifically American cultural identity. I situate Curtis in relation to governmental policies affecting Native Americans and the development of American art in the 1910s and 1920s. I argue that Curtis's photographs present two distinct perceptions of Native Americans as part of a larger effort to construct and define an American culture, the first conception marked by Progressivism at the turn of the century and the second shaped by nativism in the 1920s.