by Dan Wang
First published 2025
Dan Wang examines how Western culture has shaped our understanding of what it means to be a person. He argues that personhood operates as an aesthetic category, not merely a legal or moral one. Wang traces this development across two centuries of cultural works, from nineteenth-century European opera to Hollywood cinema to amateur YouTube videos. He demonstrates how sentimental and melodramatic forms have trained audiences to expect certain things from life itself. The book shows how romantic love, therapeutic health, and national belonging became central to personal identity through repeated exposure to specific aesthetic patterns. Wang develops new methods for reading audiovisual works that reveal the continuous imagination of personhood in Western culture. His analysis spans multiple media to tell a longer story about the forms that make being someone feel meaningful and recognizable.
Genres: literary-criticism, media-tie-in, non-fiction, art-history, academic, cultural-studies
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: academic-analysis, cultural-critique, media-studies
Period: 19th-Century, 20th-Century, 21st-Century
232 pages · Hardcover · University of Chicago Press