Art and Identity at the Water's Edge

The water's edge, whether shore or riverbank, is a marginal territory that becomes invested with layers of meaning. This title presents a collection of essays that provides various perspectives on how the water's edge has been represented in different places at various times and how this process contributed to the formation of social identities.

The collection demonstrates how waterside structures such as maritime museums and lighthouses, and visual images of the water's edge, have contributed to the construction of cultural and national identities.

Introduction: exploring the water's edge, Tricia Cusack
Part I The Nation at the Edge: Our English coasts: defence and national identity in 19th-century Britain, Christiana Payne
The Baltic's edge: architecture and art in the service of Polish maritime policy, 1918-1939, Malgorzata Omilanowska
Hurricane Katrina as visual spectacle: hurricane on the bayou and the reframing of American national identity, Anna Hartnell.
Part II Heritage by the Coast: The architecture and exhibits of Australian maritime museums: changing views at the water's edge from Sydney and Perth, William Taylor
To the lighthouse: sentinels at the water's edge, Teresa Costa.
Part III Conflicts of Identity at the Water's Edge: The Jordan river in ancient and modern maps, Rachel Havrelock
The fractured embankment: modernity and identity at the edge of the Vltava, Glyn Newman
Struggling for a day in the sun: the emergence of a beach culture among African people in Durban, Heather Hughes.
Part IV Regions of Liminality: Zone of transition: visual culture and national regeneration on the French Riviera, c.1860-1900, Tania Woloshyn
The edge of reason? Dockside and riverbank in J.A. McNeil Whistler's The Thames Set (1859-1861) and James Tissot's paintings of the Thames, 1871-1882, Vicky Greenaway
An der Oder: river romance in Breslau, Deborah Ascher Barnstone.
Part V The Edge as a Tourist Setting: Constructing the Donegal seaside at Rosapenna: imagining Norway in Victorian and Edwardian Ulster, Kevin J. James
Sunny snaps: commercial photography at the water's edge, Colin Harding
Index.