Harper’s Weekly: Illustrated Themes of the Nineteenth Century
April 3 – April 13, 2008
Presented in conjunction with the 25th Annual Conference of Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies at Marquette University, April 3-5, 2008

Harper’s Weekly:  Illustrated Themes of the Nineteenth Century featured individual lithographs from selected issues of Harper’s Weekly Journal of Civilization,founded in 1857.  The newspaperhighlighted many of the social, political and cultural events and issues of the late nineteenth century in the United States—namely, the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, the African Diasporas and abolition, ethnic and racial prejudice, poverty and class struggle, and women and children’s social roles.
The work of Thomas Nast (one of artists employed by Harper’s Weekly) was featured in this exhibition.  Nast’s art served as propaganda for both the Confederate and Northern audiences of the Civil War and also as a means for satirizing many of the prominent political figures of the period.

This exhibition was sponsored in part by the Herzfeld Endowment Fund.