This dissertation theorizes the relation between blackface minstrelsy and contemporary Black performance. The project analyzes the use of nineteenth-century blackface minstrel conventions in Black theatrical performances during later eras where its usage seems counter-intuitive: during the Black freedom struggles of the 1960s; within Black feminist and queer performance of the...
“Embodying Race, Performing Citizenship” investigates racial and ethnic impersonationsin American popular entertainment, especially vaudeville, between the 1870s and the 1920s. I
focus my analyses on first-generation Irish, Chinese, and Jewish Eastern European artists and
their American-born children during a time when the United States had absorbed the highest
number of...