Saadia N. Lawton University of Wisconsin-Madison UMI Dissertation Abstract June 2009

CONTESTED MEANINGS: AUDIENCE RESPONSES

TO THE WEDGWOOD SLAVE MEDALLION, 1787-1839

Saadia N. Lawton

This dissertation investigates how audiences responded to the Wedgwood slave

medallion and some of its subsequent permutations. The project builds upon and challenges the

premise that the Wedgwood slave medallion received universal affirmation and approbation

from its different audiences across time. Theories about audience reception and the intersections

of race, class, gender, and nationality drive this investigation to reveal how commonalities within

a given community cannot serve as indicators that homogenous responses will be manifest. In

fact, this project uses audience reception studies to demonstrate that personal characteristics and

experiences inform unique, individualized understandings of any given object. In the case of the

Wedgwood slave medallion, the object’s inherent ambiguity, both in its design elements and in

the multiple meanings its various audiences ascribed to it, gave rise to contested readings by

targeted users and unexpected makers alike. As these audiences grew and split into separate

distinct interpretive communities, individual responses to the object produced new meanings and

new permutations that reflect a complex heterogeneous understanding and negotiation of the

object’s imagery.

The dissertation contains four chapters organized by different groups. Starting with the

1787 British production and ending with the 1839 permutation made and used by free African

Americans in Philadelphia, each section uses organizational minutes, ledgers, rare books, diaries,

speeches, newspaper editorials, articles, narratives, images and objects to explore audience

responses as unique case studies. These studies show that even audiences who shared similar

characteristics such as race, class, gender, and nationality reacted to these objects differently.

These case studies evince that commonalities do not imply homogeneous responses. They also

Saadia N. Lawton University of Wisconsin-Madison UMI Dissertation Abstract June 2009

illuminate the relationship between production and consumption to reveal how audience

responses to the slave medallion were a direct result of the object’s inherent visual ambiguities

that left it susceptible to contested meanings. This project offers new ways to include and

investigate marginalized and excluded audiences in art history. It reveals the rich conclusions

that pragmatic methods offer studies based on a hypothesis, and encourages scholars to locate

new readings of historical images.