Racial Geometries of the Black Atlantic, Asian Pacific and American Theatre

by Steen, Shannon

• ISBN13: 9780230221932
• ISBN10: 0230221939
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-03-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Drawing on original archival research, Racial Geometries examines popular forms of performance -- from musical theatre and minstrelsy to non-theatrical forms like Chinatown tourism -- to expose how American racial formation between the two world wars was not determined only within national borders but traded on and influenced international dynamics.

Author Biography

SHANNON STEEN is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Series Editors' Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xii
How Uncle Tom's Cabin Killed the King of Siam	p. 1
Wicked critters	p. 1
Uncle Tom goes to Asia	p. 21
Passing Between Nations: Racial Impersonation and Transnational Affiliation	p. 33
The Jolson exception	p. 37
The racial "real" and the passing of blackface	p. 41
East is West and yellowface passing	p. 44
Documenting China in The Good Earth	p. 49
Geometries of passing	p. 63
Melancholy Bodies: Eugene O'Neill, Imperial Critique, and Irish Assimilation	p. 65
Celtic Calibans and Sino-Paddies	p. 65
Melancholy bodies	p. 71
Corporeal enslavement and The Emperor Jones	p. 77
Corporeal loss and Marco Millions	p. 91
Spectacles of racial loss	p. 99
American Progress: The Paradox of Internationalism	p. 103
Paul Robeson's Sino-Modernity	p. 109
Mei Lanfang in America	p. 113
Chinatown tourism	p. 120
Racial soul: reading Mei Lanfang	p. 127
Reprise: East is West	p. 134
The Geometries of Swing: A Black Pacific and The Swing Mikados	p. 137
The anthropological Pacific and racial indeterminacy	p. 142
How The Mikado came to swing	p. 145
Oriental blackness	p. 152
Coda: The Black Face of US Imperialism	p. 164
Notes	p. 169
Bibliography	p. 197
Index	p. 207
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