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Oriental, Black, and White : the formation of racial habits in American theater

Title
Oriental, Black, and White : the formation of racial habits in American theater / Josephine Lee.
Author
Lee, Josephine, 1960-
Publication
Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2022]

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextUse in library Sc E 23-238Schomburg Center - Research & Reference

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Description
x, 331 pages : illustrations; 24 cm
Summary
"Josephine Lee looks at how nineteenth and early twentieth century commercial American theater combined Black and Asian stage representations. In minstrelsy, melodrama, vaudeville, and musical theater, both white and Black performers enacted blackface characterizations alongside Oriental stereotypes of opulence and deception, comic servitude, and exotic sexuality. Building on scholarship on orientalism in arts and culture and Blackness in minstrelsy, Lee shows how blackface was often associated with working-class masculinity and the development of a nativist white racial identity for European immigrants. Meanwhile, everything 'oriental,' Lee argues, marked what was culturally coded as foreign, feminized, and ornamental, and these conflicting racial representations were often intermingled in actual stage performance"--
Alternative Title
Oriental, Black & White
Subject
  • 1800-1999
  • Race in the theater > United States > History > 19th century
  • Race in the theater > United States > History > 20th century
  • Orientalism > United States > History > 19th century
  • Orientalism > United States > History > 20th century
  • African Americans in the performing arts > History > 19th century
  • African Americans in the performing arts > History > 20th century
  • Blackface > United States
  • Yellowface > United States
  • African Americans in the performing arts
  • Blackface
  • Orientalism
  • Race in the theater
  • Race relations
  • Yellowface
  • United States > Race relations
  • United States
Genre/Form
History.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Oriental, black, and white -- The racial refashioning of "Aladdin" -- The lesser roles of Ira Aldridge -- Blackface minstrelsy's Japanese turns -- The tricky servant in blackface and yellowface -- The Chinese laundry sketch -- "Maybe now and then a Chinaman": African American impersonators and Chinese specialties -- Divas and dancers: oriental femininity and African American performance -- Oriental frolics and racial uplift in the early African American musical -- Pleasure domes and journeys home: "In Dahomey," "Abyssinia," "The Children of the Sun," and "Shuffle Along" -- Fantasy islands: staging the Philippines, 1900-1914 -- Racial puzzles, chop suey, and Juanita Long Hall in "Flower Drum Song."
Call Number
Sc E 23-238
ISBN
  • 9781469669618
  • 1469669617
  • 9781469669625
  • 1469669625
  • 9781469669632 (canceled/invalid)
LCCN
2022010529
OCLC
  • 1315573851
  • 1315573851
Author
Lee, Josephine, 1960- author.
Title
Oriental, Black, and White : the formation of racial habits in American theater / Josephine Lee.
Publisher
Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2022]
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Chronological Term
1800-1999
Cover Title
Oriental, Black & White
Research Call Number
Sc E 23-238
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