Emily Rose Beeber

Employing a transnational, diasporic approach, this dissertation explores the relationship between portraiture and Jewish identity in the Atlantic world during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Centering case studies in the port cities of New York, Charleston, Philadelphia, and London, with forays to the Caribbean, this project analyzes how Jewish people adeptly deployed visual culture as artists, patrons, sitters, and consumers to articulate individual and group identities and to cultivate interpersonal bonds both locally and diasporically. Examining representations of Jewish people across media in tandem with surviving material artifacts and written sources illuminates how portraits and other types of objects, from Torah scrolls to kosher meat, contributed to religious, economic, and familial ties within and between Jewish communities. By centering Jewish agency, creativity, and resilience, this project augments both ethnic and religious diversity in the study of historical American art.