Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Lust on Trial
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1964?
WEBSITE:
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
Phone: 212 217.4673; married to author Frederick Lane.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: nr 99003343
Personal name heading:
Werbel, Amy Beth
Variant(s): Werbel, Amy
Found in: Perspective in the life and art of Thomas Eakins, c1996:
t.p. (Amy Beth Werbel)
Thomas Eakins, c2007: ECIP data view (Werbel, Amy B.; b.
Apr. 6, 1964) bk. t.p. (Amy Werbel) jkt. (prof. of fine
arts, St. Michael's Coll., Colchester, Vt.)
PERSONAL
Born April 6, 1964; married Frederick Lane (an author).
EDUCATION:Radcliffe College/Harvard University, A.B. (magna cum laude), 1986; Yale University, Ph.D. 1996.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, historian, and educator. St. Michael’s College, Colchester, VT, professor, 1994-2013; Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China, instructor, 2011-12; Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY, associate professor, 2013—. Vermont School Board commissioner, 2005-11.
AWARDS:Outstanding Academic Title Award, Choice, for Thomas Eakins; Fulbright Scholarship, 2011-12. Fellowships from organizations, including the Frick Center for the History of Collecting, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Metropolitan Museum of Art.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including A Drawing Manual, by Thomas Eakins, Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA), 2005, and Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures, by Helen A. Cooper, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT). Contributor of articles to publications, including Sculpture Review, History News Network, Panorama, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Vermont History Journal.
SIDELIGHTS
Amy Werbel is a writer, historian, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Radcliffe College at Harvard University, as well as a Ph.D. from Yale University. She taught for many years at St. Micheal’s College, in Colchester, Vermont. In 2013, Werbel joined the Fashion Institute of Technology. From 2011 to 2012, a scholarship from the Fulbright Foundation allowed her to serve as an instructor at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in China. She wrote a book on her time in China called Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World’s Most Important Rising Generation. Werbel has received other awards and fellowships from organizations, including the Frick Center for the History of Collecting, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Thomas Eakins
In 2007, Werbel released her first book, Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia. The volume was named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice. In it, Werbel describes Eakins’s art, which often featured realistic depictions of the human body. In order to have a fuller understanding of the body, Eakins visited medical schools in Philadelphia, sometimes sitting in on dissections. Not only did Eakins himself focus on the body, he encouraged his students to do so, too. His work was criticized by professionals in the art world and by clients.
Reviewing the book on the Pennsylvania History website, Karol K. Weaver suggested: “Werbel’s creativity is inspiring. She employs primary sources skillfully in order to contextualize Eakins in his time and place. She clearly shows that Eakins held fast to his artistic and cultural values despite their being in conflict with social and cultural standards of the day.” Weaver added: “Thomas Eakins … will appeal to a wide and diverse audience. Art historians will appreciate Werbel’s analysis of Eakins’ art.”
Lust on Trial
In Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock, Werbel focuses on censorship in the late-1800s and early-1900s. She profiles Comstock, who led an organization called the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. He used this platform to call out perceived obscenities in art, theater, and consumer products. Comstock condemned individual artists, including Thomas Eakins, the subject of Werbel’s first book. In an interview with Randy Dotinga, contributor to the Christian Science Monitor website, Werbel discussed the concept of lust in the context of the book. She stated: “There’s an idea of temptation that’s rooted in the Bible, that it’s the downfall of man. The evangelical idea is to get rid of the temptation before men, in particular, would fall into that trap of lust. That’s what fuels Comstock’s incredibly fierce persistence in the face of so many obstacles and pushback. He really believes in this theology of lust and hell.”
“Werbel … offers a richly detailed examination of Comstock’s life and mission, which she presents as a cautionary tale for our own time,” commented a Kirkus Reviews writer. The same writer described Lust on Trial as “an incisive history of the futility of censorship.” A reviewer in Publishers Weekly called it an “insightful and entertaining critical examination” and a “fascinating, page-turning study.” The reviewer asserted: “Werbel’s writing possesses a scholarly formality, but also accessibility, elegance, and wit.” Scott McLemee, critic on the Inside Higher Ed website, remarked: “Making good use of recent monographic studies of mass media and the history of sexuality, the author, an associate professor of the history of art at the Fashion Institute of Technology, places the architect and chief executor of U.S. anti-obscenity law in a thick social and cultural context.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Biography, spring, 2010, Karol K. Weaver, review of Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia, p. 431.
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2018, review of Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock.
Lambda Book Report, September, 1996, Ruth Mountaingrove, review of Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures, p. 28.
Publishers Weekly, February 5, 2018, review of Lust on Trial, p. 54.
ONLINE
Fashion Institute of Technology website, https://www.fitnyc.edu/ (May 31, 2018), author faculty profile.
Fulbright Foundation website, https://www.cies.org/ (May 31, 2018), author profile.
Inside Higher Ed, https://www.insidehighered.com/ (May 18, 2018), Scott McLemee, review of Lust on Trial.
Lust on Trial website, http://www.lustontrial.com/ (May 31, 2018), author profile.
Pennsylvania History, https://journals.psu.edu/ (May 20, 2018), Karol K. Weaver, review of Thomas Eakins.
QUOTED: "There's an idea of temptation that's rooted in the Bible, that it's the downfall of man. The evangelical idea is to get rid of the temptation before men, in particular, would fall into that trap of lust. That's what fuels Comstock's incredibly fierce persistence in the face of so many obstacles and pushback. He really believes in this theology of lust and hell."
The 19th-century censor who pushed Americans too far
Historian Amy Werbel, author of the new book 'Lust on Trial,' explores the divisive and influential career of Anthony Comstock.
Randy Dotinga
April 10, 2018 —Few people are so influential that their last name inspires a word. But Anthony Comstock, a postal inspector who becomes America's first professional censor, eagerly set himself apart.
In the Victorian era, he pushed to ban any material that threatened to inflame passion, from photographs and books to birth control guides and classic works of art. But he went too far.
Comstock's tattered legacy lies in the Dictionary.com definition of "comstockery": "overzealous moral censorship of the fine arts and literature, often mistaking outspokenly honest works for salacious ones."
Historian Amy Werbel, author of the new book Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock, talks with our contributor Randy Dotinga about this morality cop's divisive and influential career.
Q: How did censorship become an issue after the Civil War?
How well do you know British literature? Take our quiz!
A lot of Christian evangelicals had been involved in the slavery abolition movement, and they need a new gig. They'd cleansed the nation of slavery, so what's next? They'll cleanse the nation of moral perversion.
Q: Comstock targeted materials that he and others believed inspire inappropriate passion. What was his issue with lust?
There's an idea of temptation that's rooted in the Bible, that it's the downfall of man. The evangelical idea is to get rid of the temptation before men, in particular, would fall into that trap of lust.
That's what fuels Comstock's incredibly fierce persistence in the face of so many obstacles and pushback. He really believes in this theology of lust and hell and that it's his sacred mission to prevent people from falling into these traps that Satan has set.
Q: How did women fit into his worldview?
It's all predicated on the idea that it's men who can experience lust and be trapped, and it's women who are the temptation.
All this goes to bolster a patriarchal system in which proper women are passionless. This supports limiting access to birth control, abortion, and any knowledge about sexual health.
Q. Your book shows the logo of the powerful New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Amazingly, it depicts a man actually throwing books in a fire. Today, this image makes us think of Nazis and "Fahrenheit 451." Was censorship shocking then too?
At that time, this is new, and pretty much everybody says that outright pornography should be cleaned up.
But entrapment feels wrong, spying feels wrong, and there's a sense that Americans should have privacy in their own homes.
And there's worry about who will have the authority to control what will circulate in society. There's a sense that Comstock shouldn't be the one who calls the shots.
When he's rounding up art, you have artists and art collectors who have been buying these nudes saying, "You don't know anything about art. Why do you get to decide?" That's when you see his credibility begin to fall away.
Q: Comstock eventually became a joke, with newspaper cartoons mocking his priggishness. Writer H.L. Mencken memorably dismissed him as a "puritan gladiator" devoted to "pecksniffery," a 19th-century term derived from Dickens that implies moralistic hypocrisy. How did he lose his halo?
Every time he wins, he also loses because with his victories, he rallies more people to the opposition who feel this is not in keeping with the concept of liberty in the United States. But he can't admit that what he's doing is producing the opposite of what he wants.
In fact, there ends up being a gradual expansion of the idea of what kinds of speech have value and should be circulating in the marketplace of ideas.
Q: What route could he have taken instead to encourage morality?
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I compare his efforts to those of the YMCA, which builds recreational facilities at this time and holds lectures and concerts. They want young men to choose virtue over vice and they focus on offering healthy alternatives. Today they're a behemoth of offering good in the world.
What Comstock does is really the opposite, choosing the sticks over the carrots. Ultimately, that path is a dead end.
Amy Werbel is a graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges magna cum laude (AB 1986) and Yale University (PhD 1996), and the recipient of fellowships from numerous institutions, including the Frick Center for the History of Collecting, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her previous publications include Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Yale University Press, 2007), which was designated an “Outstanding Academic Title” by Choice magazine and praised in The New England Journal of Medicine as “a rigorous academic review that is readable and enjoyable.”
In addition to her scholarship on American art and sexuality, Werbel also served as a Fulbright Scholar for 2011-2012 at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in Guangzhou, China, where she taught American studies and art history courses to graduate and undergraduate students, and lectured throughout the mainland on topics including censorship. Her last book, Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World’s Most Important Rising Generation (2013), reflects on these cross-cultural experiences. Werbel presently serves as Associate Professor of the History of Art at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Amy Werbel, PhD
Amy WerbelASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Office Location: Business and Liberal Arts B650
Phone: 212 217.4673
E-mail: amy_werbel@fitnyc.edu
Amy Werbel joined the department in 2013 as a specialist in art of the United States. She is the author of numerous works on the subject of American visual culture and sexuality, including Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock (Columbia University Press, 2018), which was praised in Kirkus Reviews as "an incisive history of the futility of censorship;" and Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Yale University Press, 2007), which was designated an “Outstanding Academic Title” by Choice magazine and praised in The New England Journal of Medicine as “a rigorous academic review that is readable and enjoyable.”
Dr. Werbel is the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from numerous institutions, including the Frick Center for the History of Collecting, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. She served as a Fulbright Scholar for 2011-2012 at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in Guangzhou, China, where she taught American studies and art history courses to graduate and undergraduate students, and lectured throughout the mainland on topics including censorship. Her self-published book, Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World’s Most Important Rising Generation (2013), reflects on these cross-cultural experiences.
Education
BA, Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges
PhD, Yale University
View Dr. Werbel's CV (PDF)
Selected Publications
Books
Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).
Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World’s Most Important Rising Generation (Self-published. Printed by CreateSpace, 2013).
Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). Read reviews.
Essays
“Should She Stay or Should She Go?The uplifting, but ultimately cynical saga of Fearless Girl” 3rd Dimension (January 08, 2018).
“Imagining the Future of Monuments to the Confederacy,”Sculpture Review 357 (Winte 2017).
“Removing Monuments Won’t Fix our Problems,”History News Network (October 8, 2017).
Book Review. Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene, Diana L. Linden. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015).
In Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 3.1 (Summer, 2017).
“Lifting the Lid on Cigar Boxes at Winterthur”Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 2.2 (Fall, 2016).
“For Our Free Speech, We Have Censors to Thank,”The Chronicle of Higher Education LXII, no. 3 (September 18, 2015): A56.
"'The Crime of the Nude: Anthony Comstock's Raid on the Art Students League of New York and the Origins of Modern American Obscenity" Winterthur Portfolio 48, no. 4 (Winter, 2014): 249-282
Book Review. An Eakins Masterpiece Restored: Seeing “The Gross Clinic” Anew, edited by Kathleen A. Foster and Mark S. Tucker (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2012). In The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 138 (April, 2014): 224-226.
Book Review. Bonnie Tocher Clause. Edward Hopper in Vermont, Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2012. Vermont History Journal 81, no. 1 (Winter/Spring, 2013): 126-128.
“Tales from the Vault,” Common-Place Journal (October, 2010).
“Thomas Eakins: Last of the Art Crusaders,” in Kathleen A. Foster, ed., Thomas Eakins’ Drawing Book (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005): 27-44.
‘“For Our Age and Country,’ Nineteenth-Century Art Education at Central High School,” in Central High School Alumni Exhibition (exh. cat., Philadelphia: Woodmere Art Museum, 2002): 6-12.
“Thomas Eakins’s Early Years,” in Thomas Eakins: American Realist (exh. cat., Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001): 1-12.
“The Foley Food Mill,” in Jules David Prown and Kenneth Haltman, eds., American Artifacts: Material Culture Theory and Method (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000): 229-242.
“Art and Science in the Work of Thomas Eakins: The Case of Spinning and Knitting,” American Art 12, no. 3 (Fall, 1998): 31-45.
Upcoming Lectures
“Researching the Influence of Art Censorship on New York City Collectors in the Gilded Age,” Frick Center for the History of Collecting Fellows’ Forum, New York City, May 9th, 2018.
“Regulating / Selling Sex in Nineteenth-Century New York,” Joint Annual Meeting on Law and Society, Toronto, June 7, 2018.
“Lessons from 1915: Why We Cannot Retreat from the Fight for Academic Freedom” AAUP Annual Conference on the State of Higher Education, Arlington VA, June 15, 2018.
“New York City Defense Attorneys, Anthony Comstock, Artists, and the Emergence of the First Amendment, 1873-1915,” New York City Bar Association, New York City, June 21, 2018.
"Lust on Trial" History Book Festival, Lewes DE, September 28-29, 2018.
“The Past, Present, and Future of American Free Speech: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen and Daniel Levinson-Wilk,” Fashion Institute of Technology, New York City, October 23, 2018.
Amy Werbel
Institution:
Fashion Institute of Technology-United States-New York
Countries:
China
Discipline:
Area Studies
Professor, Department of Fine Arts
State University of New York – Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY
Lecturing: Study of the United States
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China
August 2011 - June 2012
Fulbright Presentation (.PDF)
Curriculum Vitae (.PDF)
Photos
Email: amy_werbel@fitnyc.edu
Amy Werbel is Associate Professor of the History of Art at the State University of New York – Fashion Institute of Technology. At F.I.T., she teaches diverse courses on the history of American art and the contemporary art scene. F.I.T. is a community college that serves approximately 10,000 students each year earning degrees from the Associate through Masters level, in addition to offering non-degree programs for continuing professional development. Prior to her position at F.I.T., Werbel taught at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont for 18 years.
Werbel’s scholarly work focuses on visual culture and sexuality, including Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Yale University Press, 2007). Her new book project examines censorship in America before World War I, Lust on Trial: American Art, Law, and Culture During the Reign of Anthony Comstock (Columbia University Press, forthcoming 2017).
Werbel is fortunate to have served as a Fulbright Scholar for the 2011-2012 academic year at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in Guangzhou, China. At G.D.U.F.S., Werbel taught American Studies and art history courses for undergraduate and graduate students. She also lectured throughout the mainland on topics including the history of censorship in America. Her most recent book, Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World’s Most Important Rising Generation (2013) reflects on these cross-cultural experiences.
Werbel /
1
Amy B. Werbel
Associate Professor
History of Art Department
State University of New York,
Fashion Institute of Technology
Amy_Werbel@fitnyc.edu
http://www.fitnyc.edu/art
-
history/faculty/amy
-
werbel.php
Education
Yale University
Ph.D. in the History of Art
,
1996
H
arvard and Radcliffe Colleges
B.A.
magna cum laude
in Fine Arts, 1986
Present
Associate Professor of the Histor
y of Art
E
mployment
State University of New York, Fashion Institute of Technology
(2013
-
)
P
revious
Professor of Art History and American Studies
Positions
Saint Michael’s College
Held
Colchester, Vermont
(1994
-
2013)
Fulbright Scholar
Guangdong U
niversity of Foreign Studies
Guangzhou, China (2011
-
2012)
Publications: Books
Lust on Trial: American Art, Law, and Culture during the Reign of Anthony
Comstock
(
New York: Columbia Uni
versity Press, forthcoming
, 2017
).
Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and
Sexuality in Nineteenth
-
Century
Philadelphia
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007).
*Selected by
Choice Magazine
as an Outstanding Academic Title*
Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World’s Most
Important Rising Gen
eration
(Self
-
published. Printed by CreateSpace,
Charleston,
2013).
Publications: Essays
“For Our Free Speech, We Have Censors to Thank,”
The Chronicle of
and
Book Reviews
,
Higher Education
LXII, no. 3 (September 18, 2015): A56.
Selected
http://chronicle.com/article/For
-
Our
-
Free
-
Speech
-
We
-
Have/233059
“’The Crime of the Nude:’ Anthony Comstock’s Raid on the Art
Students League of New York and the Origins of Modern American
Obscenity”
Winterthur Portfolio
48, no. 4
(Winter, 2014
)
: 249
-
282
Office address:
27th Street at 7th Avenue, B634
New York, New York
10001
212
-
217
-
4673
Werbel /
2
Book Review.
An Eakins Masterpiece Restored: Seeing “The Gross and
Clinic” Anew,
edited by Kathleen A. Foster and Mark S. Tucker
(Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2012). In
The Pennsylvania Ma
gazine of
History and Biography
138 (April, 2014): 224
-
226.
Book Review. Bonnie Tocher Clause.
Edward Hopper in Vermont,
Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2012
. I
n
Vermont History Journal
81, no. 1 (Winter/Spring, 2013): 126
-
128.
“T
ales from the Vault
: Searching for Smut
,”
Common
-
Place Journal
(October, 2010).
http://www.common
-
place.org/vol
-
11/no
-
01/tales/
“Thomas Eakins: Last of the Art Crusaders,” in Kathleen A. F
oster,
ed.,
Thomas Eakins’ Drawing Book
(
New Haven: Yale University Press,
2005
)
: 27
-
44.
“
Thomas Eakins’s Early Years,” in
Thomas Eakins: American Realist
(
exh. cat., Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001
)
: 1
-
12.
“The Foley Food Mill,” in
Jules
David Prown and Kenneth Haltman,
eds.,
American Artifacts: Material Culture
Theory and Method
(
East
Lansing: Michigan State University
Press,
2000
)
: 229
-
242.
“Art and Science in the Work of Thomas Eakins: The Case of
Spinning
and
Knitting
,
”
American Ar
t
12, no. 3 (Fall, 1998): 31
-
45.
F
ellowships
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute
And Grants
,
America
n Material Culture: 19th
Century New York
Selected
Bard Gradate Center
Participant, 2013
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Senior Fellow, 201
0.
New England Regional Fellowship Consortium
Bostonian Society / New England Women's Club Grant, 2008.
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Fellowship at the Library of the New
-
York Historical Society, 2008.
Public
“
Nymphs, Satyrs, and Ce
nsors: The Trials of
Muller
and
Knoedler
, and
Lectures
,
the Origins of Modern American Obscenity
,
”
Association
of
Selected
Historians of
American Art (October 11
, 2014)
.
"Art, Sex, and Censorship on Trial:
The Case of
Anthony Comstock vs.
the Art Students League
of New York
(1906)
,
"
Art Students League of
New York (September 16, 2014)
.
Werbel /
3
“Men will be Men: The Visual Culture of Saloons and Brothels in
19
th
-
Century New York,” New York Metro American Studies
Association.
(November 2, 2013).
“Thomas Eakins
and the
A
nalysis of Gender and Sexuality in
Nineteenth
-
Century American Painting
s,
” College of the Holy Cross
(April
18
, 2013).
“Censorship of Visual Culture in the United States,” “African
Cultural Traditions in American Art and Architecture,” and
“Modern Ame
rican
Painting
,” Xinjiang Normal University, Urumqi,
Uyghur Autonomo
us Region, China (
May 31 and June 1,
2012).
“Censorship of Visual Culture in the United States,
”
“Images of
George Washington and the Formation of American Political
Power,” and “Underst
anding American Culture through Art,” Peking
University Graduate School, Shenzhen, China (February 29 and
March 1, 2012).
“Art and National Identity in the Early Republic and Antebellum
Era,” United International College, Zhuhai, China (February 23,
2012)
.
“Censorship of Visual
Culture
in the United States,”
School of
Modern Languages and Cultures,
Hong Kong University
(February 8,
2011).
“Censorship of Visual Culture in the United States,” and
“Architecture and Culture of New York City before World Wa
r I,”
Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China (November
3 and 4
,
2011).
“Censorship of Visual Culture in the United States,
”
and “The Rise
and Role of Women Artists in the United States,”
Shantou
University,
Shantou, China (
October 27
and 28
, 2011).
“
T
h
omas Eakins and th
e
Politics of
Beefcake
,
” Los Angeles
County
Museum of Art
(
October
, 2010).
“
Art and Vice
‘
Confounded:
’
Anthony Comstock's 1906
Prosecution
of the Art Student's League of New York
,
”
New England American
Studie
s Ass
ociation Annual Conferen
ce
(October
, 2010)
.
“
What Every American Art Historian
Should
Know about Anthony
Comstock
,
”
Smithsonian American Art Museum (August, 2010).
Werbel /
4
“Anthony Comstock and the Censorship of Radical
Women
:
Prosecutions of Victoria Woodhull
, Margaret Sange
r, Emma
Goldman, and Mary Ware Dennett
,
” Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study
(
January, 2009
)
.
“The Life
and Legacy of Anthony Comstock
,
” Connecticut
Historical Society
(
July, 2008
)
.
“The Epistemology of Thomas Eakins'
Gross Clini
c
,
” College Art
Association Annual Conference
(
February, 2008
)
.
“Subversive Body Politics: Artistic and Medical Anatomy Education
in Nineteenth
-
Century Philadelphia
,
” Dartmouth
College
Humanities
Institute
(
May, 2006
)
.
Professional
Fulbright China Scholar Program Orientation Leader.
Leadership
(2013
, 2014
).
Institute for International Exchange Peer Review
Panelist
.
(2013, 2014
, 2015
)
Co
-
Chair, “
Jurisprudishness
:
Law a
nd Visual Culture
in th
e United
States, 1842
-
1973.” College Art Association Annual Conference
Session (February, 2011).
Community
Commissioner, Burlington School Board, 2005
-
2011
Service
Amy Werbel
Amy Werbel
Associate Professor of the History of Art
Brooklyn, New York
Higher Education
Current
Fashion Institute of Technology
Previous
Saint Michael's College, Fulbright Scholarship Program
Education
Yale University
Websites
Company Website
390
connections
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Experience
Fashion Institute of Technology
Associate Professor of the History of Art
Fashion Institute of Technology
2013 – Present (5 years)New York City, NY
I currently History of American Art, History of African American Art, Art in New York, and American Narratives in New York City Museums. My latest book is Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock (Columbia University Press, 2018)
Saint Michael's College
Professor of Art History and American Studies
Saint Michael's College
1994 – 2013 (19 years)Colchester, Vermont
Fulbright Scholar
Fulbright Scholarship Program
July 2011 – July 2012 (1 year 1 month)Guangzhou, China
I taught American Studies at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and also traveled across China delivering lectures at other universities.
Education
Yale University
Yale University
PhD, art history
1987 – 1996
Harvard College
AB, magna cum laude, Fine Arts
1983 – 1986
Hunter College High School
1976 – 1982
Volunteer Experience & Causes
Commissioner
Burlington, VT School Board
2005 – 2011 (6 years)Education
Skills
TeachingHigher EducationPublic SpeakingPublicationsMicrosoft OfficeLecturingMuseum EducationHistoryResearchArt HistoryGrant WritingMuseumsEditorialBloggingPhotoshopSee 6+
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Groups
Hunter College High School Alumnae/i Association
Hunter College High School Alumnae/i Association
Fulbright Scholar Program Alumni Ambassadors
Fulbright Scholar Program Alumni A
QUOTED: "Werbel ... offers a richly detailed examination of Comstock's life and mission, which she presents as a cautionary tale for our own time."
"an incisive history of the futility of censorship."
Werbel, Amy: LUST ON TRIAL
Kirkus Reviews. (Feb. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Werbel, Amy LUST ON TRIAL Columbia Univ. (Adult Nonfiction) $35.00 4, 10 ISBN: 978-0-231-17522-7
The combative life of a man who "spread shame."
For 40 years, Anthony Comstock (1844-1915) mounted a vigorous, often obsessive campaign, in the courts and in the press, to stamp out vice. For much of his notorious career, he was the sole arbiter of obscenity. Werbel (History of Art/Fashion Institute of Technology; Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia, 2007) offers a richly detailed examination of Comstock's life and mission, which she presents as a cautionary tale for our own time, when evangelical Christianity seeks to impose its values on the nation. For Comstock and his supporters in the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, repressing sexuality was "the only solution to pressing social problems." He opposed women's empowerment, condemned abortions and the women who died from botched procedures, and viewed "child sex trafficking as largely the fault of the victims." Fueled by religious zeal and supported by others who shared his Christian ideology, Comstock worked to initiate and expand state and federal anti-obscenity statutes that criminalized "anyone who facilitated the arousal of lust and sexual gratification other than for procreative purposes within marriage." As Secretary of the NYSSV, he energetically ferreted out lust, collecting material from a wide range of sources, including publishers, artists, photographers, merchants, theatrical producers, brothels, men's clubs, and art galleries. By 1876, he had sent to pulp mills more than 21,000 pounds of books and 202,000 images and photographs. For the bulk of the book, Werbel draws on Comstock's three-volume "Records of Arrests," his detailed chronicle of his "efforts to defeat Satan in America." This material reveals the trajectory of Comstock's influence and power, which plummeted after 1884, when artists, wealthy art collectors, and lawyers, judges, and juries thwarted him, questioning his credibility as a judge of "depravity." He became a butt of jokes, skewered in derisive cartoons and criticized widely in the press.
An incisive history of the futility of censorship.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Werbel, Amy: LUST ON TRIAL." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527248135/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=92c913ac. Accessed 20 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527248135
QUOTED: "insightful and entertaining critical examination."
"Werbel's writing possesses a scholarly formality, but also accessibility, elegance, and wit."
"fascinating, page-turning study."
Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock
Publishers Weekly. 265.6 (Feb. 5, 2018): p54.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock
Amy Werbel. Columbia Univ., $35 (352p)
ISBN 978-0-231-17522-7
Werbel (Thomas Eakins), an associate art history professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, undertakes an insightful and entertaining critical examination of the prominent American censor Anthony Comstock (1844-1915). Werbel provides biographical detail, notably Comstock's pious upbringing by a Congregationalist minister father, to contextualize his mission as secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, founded in 1873. She also focuses more widely on the cultural currents of late-19th- and early-20th-century America. From the passage of the Comstock Act, which banned "obscene literature and articles of immoral use" in 1872 up until his death, Comstock battled perceived immorality in everything from contraceptives and sex toys to the theater and cigar cases, and persecuted both the famous (artist Thomas Eakins; Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger) and the forgotten (professional daredevil Steve Brodie; early standup comic Russell Flunting). Based on an impressive amount of research into both primary and secondary sources, Werbel's writing possesses a scholarly formality, but also accessibility, elegance, and wit (Comstock's "connoisseurship was rooted not in the head or the heart, but rather in the groin"). She closes this fascinating, page-turning study by rebuking Comstock and connecting her subject to modern concerns: "Our endurance as a democratic nation will be determined far more by our openness, our honesty, and our empathy than by our purity." (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock." Publishers Weekly, 5 Feb. 2018, p. 54. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A526810430/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=872e3de9. Accessed 20 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A526810430
Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures
Ruth Mountaingrove
Lambda Book Report. 5.2 (Sept. 1996): p28+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1996 Lambda Literary Foundation
http://www.lambdaliterary.org/lambda_book_report/lbr_back_issues.html
Full Text:
In the nineteenth century rowing was considered a manly sport. Male artists were considered effeminate. So how better to proclaim your masculinity than by painting manly men rowing and by being a rower yourself?
It is from this 3 1/2 years (1871-1874) of Thomas Eakins' painting career that Yale University Press gives us this handsome catalog, Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures, by Helen A. Cooper.
These rowing paintings are now scattered in many museums: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (The Champion Single Sculls, 1871); the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, (The Biglin Brothers Racing, 1872); the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, (The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake, 1873); the Portland Museum of Art, Oregon, (The Oarsmen, c 1873); Yale University Art Gallery, Connecticut, (John Biglin in a Single Scull, 1874); and the Philadelphia Museum of Act, Pennsylvania, (The Paired-Oared Shell, 1872). Now these paintings have been reunited and are part of a traveling show Eakins was a meticulous draft man and mathematician. He studied perspective and descriptive geometry, and planned out all his rowing pictures in sketches, watercolors and preliminary offs many of which are reproduced in the catalogue along with the oil paintings.
He broke from the European influence by painting scenes native to the American countryside. Nevertheless, he neither lost nor rejected what he had learned in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the most official and distinguished French art school at that time.
According to Cooper, he made this break, a change that would influence many painters in years to come, with these rowing pictures.
Cooper, the Holcombe T. Green curator of American Painting and Sculpture at the Yale University Art Gallery, has written the majority of this book, and her scholarship deals with Eakins' life, his love of rowing, and his paintings. Other contributors to the catalog are Amy B. Werbel, commenting on "Perspective in Eakins' Rowing Pictures," Christina Corrie, "Thomas Eakins Under the Microscope: A Technical Study of the Rowing Paintings," and Mark Berger writing on "Painting Victorian Manhood."
Thomas Eakins' boyhood friend was the lawyer Max Schmitt who was an amateur rower. Schmitt won the Single Sculls championship for a number of years. Eakins paints Max Schmitt in the foreground in the painting The Champion Single Sculls, and himself in the midpoint in that same painting in a scull with his name on it, much as Hitchcock identified his films by appearing in them at some point. The Champion Single Sculls is a landmark in American Realism. Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures would grace anyone's library or coffee table.
(The paintings mentioned can be seen at:the National Gallery of Art, June 23-September 29, Yale University Art Gallery, October 11, 1996-January 14, 1997, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, February 19-May 15, 1997.)
- Ruth Mountaingrove
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Mountaingrove, Ruth. "Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures." Lambda Book Report, Sept. 1996, p. 28+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A18920302/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=98d278d4. Accessed 20 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A18920302
Eakins, Thomas: Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia
Karol K. Weaver
Biography. 33.2 (Spring 2010): p431.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 University of Hawaii Press
http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/t-biography.aspx
Full Text:
Eakins, Thomas
Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia. Amy Werbel. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. xii + 194 pp. $55.00.
Werbel "traces how Thomas Eakins dedicated himself to portraying the human body as realistically as possible and how this devotion conflicted with nineteenth-century cultural and artistic norms. Werbel's creativity is inspiring. She employs primary sources skillfully in order to contextualize Eakins in his time and place. She clearly shows that Eakins held fast to his artistic and cultural values despite their being in conflict with social and cultural standards of the day.... The author supports her examination of Eakins' art and life with an amazing variety of primary sources.... Werbel's superior integration and analysis of written primary source evidence clearly show the connections between Eakins' art, nineteenth-century medicine and science, and Victorian notions of sexuality.... Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia will appeal to a wide and diverse audience."
Karol K. Weaver. Pennsylvania History 77.1 (2010): 97-98.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Weaver, Karol K. "Eakins, Thomas: Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia." Biography, vol. 33, no. 2, 2010, p. 431. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A234934604/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=123afb36. Accessed 20 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A234934604
QUOTED: "Werbel’s creativity is inspiring. She employs primary sources skillfully in order to contextualize Eakins in his time and place. She clearly shows that Eakins held fast to his artistic and cultural values despite their being in conflict with social and cultural standards of the day."
"Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia will appeal to a wide and diverse audience. Art historians will appreciate Werbel’s analysis of Eakins’ art."
book reviews
97
Amy Werbel.
Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century
Philadelphia
. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Pp. xii, 194,
illustrations, notes, index. Cloth, $55.00.)
Amy Werbel’s
Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century
Philadelphia
traces how Thomas Eakins dedicated himself to portraying the
human body as realistically as possible and how this devotion conflicted with
nineteenth-century cultural and artistic norms. Werbel’s creativity is inspir-
ing. She employs primary sources skillfully in order to contextualize Eakins
in his time and place. She clearly shows that Eakins held fast to his artistic
and cultural values despite their being in conflict with social and cultural
standards of the day.
Eakins devoted himself to an accurate portrayal of the body. This dedica-
tion took him into the dissection halls of Philadelphia medical schools and
made physicians and medical educators some of his closest colleagues. Eakins’
attachment to the body made the nude a primary object of study for him and
for his students. This stress on the naked body meant that Eakins employed
nude models in his classes, photographed the nude in various poses, and was
willing to appear nude before his students. However, his emphasis on the
body conflicted with nineteenth-century artistic, social, and cultural norms.
Eakins’ portraits, including
The Agnew Clinic
and
The Gross Clinic
, met with
criticism due to their graphic imagery. Likewise, Eakins’ artistic works met
with disapproval from critics, as well as those who commissioned the pieces,
because Eakins remained true to the uniqueness of individual bodies and was
willing to show the blemishes and physical imperfections of his subjects. The
artist’s incorporation of nude models, including his own body, in his classes
also upset his critics, some of his students, and some of his relatives. Eakins’s
response was to affirm the primacy of the human body to artistic study and
to assert that his male and female students needed to be exposed to the same
education. Werbel plainly demonstrates that the importance Eakins attached
to the human body opened him to criticism from a variety of individuals.
The author supports her examination of Eakins’ art and life with an amazing
variety of primary sources. Werbel, of course, scrutinizes Eakins’ well-known
paintings, but also considers his lesser known bronze casts and photographs,
and compares his works with compositions created by other artists. Werbel
complements her investigation of visual and material sources with written
sources including correspondence, newspaper reports, articles from scientific
and art journals, and trial transcripts. The book’s fine set of illustrations and
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pennsylvania history
98
Werbel’s superior integration and analysis of written primary source evidence
clearly show the connections between Eakins’ art, nineteenth-century medicine
and science, and Victorian notions of sexuality. Werbel’s use of a tremendous
array of primary sources enables her to place Eakins in the time in which
he lived. She concludes her work by asserting that “our historical subjects
deserve the same common courtesies we hope for the living—the privilege of
self-definition to the extent feasible, an effort to understand context and point
of view, a presumption of innocence, and finally, not to be neutered, outed,
demonized, or similarly categorized to suit the intellectual fashions of our own
times.” Werbel maintains, “no historian or critic can have the last word on a
consummate artist . . . that privilege will reside with Thomas Eakins for as
long as his art compels viewers to look deeply” (161).
Werbel also does a fine job placing Eakins in the city in which he lived and
worked. First of all, the author compares Eakins to other Philadelphia artisan-
artist-scientists, specifically Benjamin Franklin and Charles Wilson Peale.
The three men came from the middle class, called Philadelphia their home,
and embraced invention and science. Secondly, Werbel analyzes Eakins’
associations with and contributions to several important Philadelphia insti-
tutions, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and various
Philadelphia medical colleges. Finally, Werbel analyzes Eakins’ values in rela-
tion to a religion, Quakerism, which had profound effects on Philadelphia.
In particular, Werbel documents Eakins’ family connections to the faith,
his persistent call for equal education for men and women, and his desire
to portray his subjects plainly and accurately. Werbel’s determined analysis
of Eakins and Philadelphia showed how Eakins “negotiated issues of class,
gender, and sexuality while making . . . unique contributions to the cultural
history of Philadelphia” (2).
Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia
will appeal to a wide and diverse audience. Art historians will appreciate
Werbel’s analysis of Eakins’ art. Historians of medicine and science will value
the author’s examination of nineteenth-century scientific and medical devel-
opments. Scholars interested in gender studies will find a fine assessment of
nineteenth-century gender relations, masculinity, femininity, and sexuality.
Finally, scholars of Philadelphia history and culture will discover an intrigu-
ing look at Eakins and the city where he lived and worked.
KAROL K. WEAVER
Susquehanna University
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QUOTED: "Making good use of recent monographic studies of mass media and the history of sexuality, the author, an associate professor of the history of art at the Fashion Institute of Technology, places the architect and chief executor of U.S. anti-obscenity law in a thick social and cultural context."
Portrait of a Puritanical Knucklehead
The struggle between piety and libido in the age of mechanical reproduction is at the core of Amy Werbel's Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock, writes Scott McLemee.
By
Scott McLemee
May 18, 2018
Comments
A reference librarian of my acquaintance was once asked by a patron to locate an authoritative account of how Johannes Gutenberg -- after finishing up with the Bible -- applied his invention to the manufacture of pornography. It had the odd quality of sounding both preposterous and faintly plausible at the same time. The patron was sure he'd read it somewhere, but couldn't remember where, which is exactly the kind of problem reference librarians make their bones by solving.
But a thorough search of both print and digital sources turned up nothing. It seems likely that the patron had seen a reference to how pornographers tend to be early adopters of new technology and made an overly literal deduction from it. At the same time, however, "the intertwining of religion and pornography in diffusing communication technologies" is "far closer than might otherwise be suspected," as Jonathan Coopersmith said in a paper published in 1998. Besides the sacred and profane uses of the printing press, Coopersmith noted that "religious and pornographic images were the earliest and major uses of Stanhope lenses -- glass slivers which magnified images -- in the mid-19th century."
The struggle between piety and the libido in the age of mechanical reproduction is at the core of Amy Werbel's Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock (Columbia University Press). Making good use of recent monographic studies of mass media and the history of sexuality, the author, an associate professor of the history of art at the Fashion Institute of Technology, places the architect and chief executor of U.S. anti-obscenity law in a thick social and cultural context.
The variety and sheer abundance of erotic merchandise on sale in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th century is staggering: not only evidence of Yankee ingenuity but also proof that the sexual revolution of later decades was long in preparation. Stanhope lenses of the illicit variety -- "depicting a single [nude] female figure standing or sitting in a languorous pose … set against backdrops of Moorish architectural elements, holding peacock feathers, or in faux agricultural scenes" -- were among the tamer commodities available. There was a thriving and very profitable industry in sex toys such as, in Comstock's words, “‘dildoes (that being the trade name) made of stout rubber, and in the form of the male organ of generation, for self-pollution.” Their manufacture, advertisement and sale was subject to prosecution under the Comstock laws, though Comstock professed himself unable to understand who would buy them.
The limits of his imagination were no brake on his effectiveness. In the late 1860s and early '70s, Comstock's activity was confined to the Northeastern Unted States. Over a seven year period, he was involved "in seizing and destroying 134,000 pounds of books, 194,000 'bad pictures and photographs,' 6,250 microscopic pictures, and 60,300 'articles made of rubber for immoral purposes, and used by both sexes.' " (The puzzling expression "microscopic pictures" refers to Stanhope's.) His influence went national in 1873, when Congress passed "An Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, obscene Literature and Articles, of immoral Use" -- the legislation that became his namesake. Besides the trade in sexual imagery and writing, the Comstock Act took aim at the distribution of anything about or enabling contraction or abortion, and could even be invoked to prosecute material that denied the value of marriage. It was a law designed to perpetuate monogamy, procreation and guilt.
In short order, Comstock was named an official but unpaid employee of the U.S. Postal Service, his activity subsidized largely by donations from wealthy supporters who gathered to view samples of the immoral material he was seizing. While never as inventive about using new technology as merchants of the erogenous, Comstock was driven to use every venue available to him in advancing his cause. "If Comstock wasn’t physically in your hometown during his career between 1873 and 1915," Werbel writes, "he was there in your hometown newspaper, fighting the purveyors of vice on the streets and in court, weighing in as a critic of art, theater and literature, suffering editorial and physical attacks from his many enemies, being defended by ministers and moralists, and lampooned as a Puritanical knucklehead."
The degree of resistance to his crusade, even when enforced by federal law, is remarkable and merits more comment than I can give it this week; we'll get into it in the next column. Suffice it for now to say that the title of one of his pamphlets, "Morality Versus Art," is indicative of both his attitude and his Achilles heel. The manufacturers of sexual devices "of stout rubber" had very limited recourse in opposing him, while creative people did not. A satirical cartoon depicts Comstock as Saint Anthony -- triumphant over temptation like the early Christian monk of that name, or making quite a show of sparing others from it, in any event. A polemic by George Bernard Shaw included a reference to “Comstockery" as "the world’s standing joke at the expense of the United States.”
The dart must have hit the mark, because Comstock felt compelled to offer his own definition of Comstockery: “The applying of the noblest principles of law, as defined by the higher Courts of great Britain and the United States of America, in the interest of Public morals, especially those of the young.” It seems extremely unlikely anyone else has ever used the word in his preferred sense.