Stamping American Memory
Collectors, Citizens, and the Post
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4751511 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tona Hangen (corresponding author), Tona J Hangen |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 106 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 233-234 |
| Publication date | 2019-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jaz282 |
| OpenAlex | W2947257802 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
Stamp collecting is not just a popular hobby; the objects of its interest limn a nation's history and help construct identity, argues Sheila A. Brennan in her thoughtful philatelic cultural history, Stamping American Memory. She unpacks the cultural work that stamps accomplished in the early twentieth century: cementing communities of devoted collectors, expressing the imperial desires of an increasingly powerful American nation, and imprinting a triumphalist vision of America on the public consciousness. While describing the community of stamp collectors with precision is difficult, early on the practice seems to have been the province of white men; when founded in 1886, the American Philatelic Association called itself a “brotherhood” with genteel aspirations similar to other fraternal orders of the day, although a stamp-collecting guide distributed by the postal service in the 1930s depicted both girls and boys in its illustrations. In the late nineteenth century, stamps appeared as promotional incentives accompanying corporate trade cards and cigarette cards. The Boy Scouts of America developed a stamp-collecting merit badge in 1931. Stamp collecting, it was thought, cultivated wholesome, patriotic, and scientific sensibilities, as collectors—whether young or old—organized, classified, sorted, and displayed their collections, often in preprinted albums with blank spaces that incentivized further consumer activity
Advertising · Art · Art history · Boy Scouts · Hobby · Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Visual arts · History · Law · Photography and Visual Culture
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2024 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |