From "Continental sisterhood" (1901) to "Brotherhood Week!" (1960): caricature, Cartography, and Continental Personification of the Americas

The 1901 Pan-American Exposition logo shows two figures coded as white and female. One appears atop a cartographic rendering of South America holding hands with the other, who appears atop a rendering of North America. According to The Current Encyclopedia, this emblem “was accepted as the most artistic and suitable from several hundred designs submitted, and has the especial merit of effectively symbolizing one of the chief purposes of the Exposition, which is to bring into closer social and trade relationship the republics, states and territories of North and South America... thus forming a bond of continental sisterhood.” (1901:

119) The image draws upon a long tradition of personifying the Americas as female in early European map cartouches depicting the territory. The widely-reproduced logo appeared in contemporaneous political cartoons, such as “The Pan-American Emblem as Amended by Great Britain” (c. 1901), which shows the logo with a lion adorned with a British flag inserted between the two human figures. The trope appears in modified form in later works like “Brotherhood Week!” (1960), which shows a two male-coded figures, respectively representing “So. America” and “USA,” holding hands across their respective continents. What do representations of South and North American unity, cooperation, and agreements reveal about lived transcontinental interactions? How have continental personifications shifted to accommodate revised narratives? With particular attention to the role of cartography and gender in personifications of North and South America, I interrogate the interplay of cartography, caricature, and continental personification in representations of the Americas.