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This course uses physical and bodily “appearance” to explore histories of gender and U.S. empire during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will examine “appearance” through visual and performative culture (fashion, dress, photographs, beauty pageants, advertising, mass media, film, video, etc.). Appearance in historical perspectives reveals strategic uses of racial and gendered aesthetics in order to structure and maintain colonial power and empire. At the same time, this class pushes us to consider how marginalized individuals and communities used the same arenas and deliberate stylization of their appearance as a form of resistance. While the extent of U.S. empire crossed multiple oceans and borders, this class will focus in in U.S. expansion in the Pacific as a case study in order to explore the complexities of modern empire and decolonization efforts.