In The Ellis Island Snow Globe, Erica Rand, author of the smart and entertaining book Barbie's Queer Accessories, takes readers on an unconventional tour of Ellis Island, the migration station turned heritage museum, and its neighbor, the Statue of Liberty. By pausing to reflect on what is and is not on display at these two iconic national monuments, Rand focuses attention on whose heritage is honored and whose obscured. She also reveals the shifting connections between sex, money, material products, and ideas of the nation in everything from the ostensible father-mother-child configuration on an Ellis Island golf ball purchased at the gift shop to the multi-million dollar July 4, 1986 Liberty Weekend extravaganza celebrating the Statue's centennial just days after the Supreme Court's un-Libertylike decision upholding the antisodomy laws challenged in Bowers v. Hardwick.

Rand notes that portrayals of the Statue of Liberty as a beacon for immigrants tend to suppress the Statue's connections to people brought to this country by force. She examines what happened to migrants at Ellis Island whose bodies did not match the gender suggested by the clothing they wore. In light of contemporary ideas about safety and security, she examines the "Decide an Immigrant's Fate" program, which has visitors to Ellis Island act as a 1910 board of inspectors hearing the appeal of an immigrant about to be excluded from the country. Rand is a witty, insightful, and open-minded tour guide, able to synthesize numerous diverse ideas-about tourism, immigration history, sexuality, race, ethnicity, commodity culture, and global capitalism-and to candidly convey her delight in her Ellis Island snow globe. And pen. And lighter. And back scratcher. And golf ball. And glittery pink key chain.

A study of the Ellis Island museum, its gift shop, and the Statue of Liberty form the basis of reflections on sex, nation, and immigration

About the Author

Erica Rand is Professor of Art and Visual Culture and Chair of Women and Gender Studies at Bates College. She is the author of Barbie's Queer Accessories, also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews
"The Ellis Island Snow Globe is a wonderfully creative, playful, and serious piece of scholarship. Demonstrating that pleasure and critique need not be incompatible, Erica Rand offers not only a model for thinking about contemporary capitalism but a way to live in it."-Miranda Joseph, author of Against the Romance of Community "The Ellis Island Snow Globe is quite simply a great book. Destined to become a classic in contemporary cultural studies, it is one of the few books I've read in the last year or so that has taught me something new on every page."-Henry Jenkins, coeditor of Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture "Much as she did in her earlier book, Barbie's Queer Accessories, Erica Rand turns a kitsch artifact of consumer culture into a powerful tool for cultural analysis. In this insightful and engaging new work, she transforms an Ellis Island snow globe into a window through which we see how state control of borders and migrations structures sexuality, gender, desire, and family in unexpected ways. One of the best cultural studies books I've read in a long time."-Susan Stryker, producer and codirector of Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria "Rand clearly demonstrates how the categories of liberty and citizenship depend precisely on particular kinds of exclusions-those individuals whose sexual identities and behaviors do not correspond with the dominant gendering and sexualizing of the statue herself." - Sarah Banet-Weiser (American Quarterly)



Book Information
ISBN 9780822335788
Author Erica Rand
Format Hardback
Page Count 277
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 630g