Forbidden Mixtures: Shakespeare in Blackface Minstrelsy, 1844 1

2017 ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
Kahn Coppélia ◽  
University Brown
Keyword(s):  
Blackface Minstrelsy

Blackface Minstrelsy and the Reception of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-320
Author(s):  
Julia J. Chybowski
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Black Swan ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Blackface Minstrelsy ◽  
And Gender

AbstractThis article explores blackface minstrelsy in the context of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's singing career of the 1850s–1870s. Although Greenfield performed a version of African American musicality that was distinct from minstrel caricatures, minstrelsy nonetheless impacted her reception. The ubiquity of minstrel tropes greatly influenced audience perceptions of Greenfield's creative and powerful transgressions of expected race and gender roles, as well as the alignment of race with mid-nineteenth-century notions of social class. Minstrel caricatures and stereotypes appeared in both praise and ridicule of Greenfield's performances from her debut onward, and after successful US and transatlantic tours established her notoriety, minstrel companies actually began staging parody versions of Greenfield, using her sobriquet, “Black Swan.” These “Black Swan” acts are evidence that Greenfield's achievements were perceived as threats to established social hierarchies.

Queer Laughter in the Archives of Silent Film Comedy

2021 ◽  
pp. 92-121
Author(s):  
Maggie Hennefeld
Keyword(s):  
Silent Film ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Capitalist Class ◽  
Blackface Minstrelsy ◽  
Lesbian Sexuality ◽  
Film Comedy

This chapter looks and listens for queer traces of lesbian sexuality in the archives of American silent film comedies, from 1894 to 1919. Like sexuality, laughter is arousing, ambiguous, and often difficult to understand out of context. Focusing on A Florida Enchantment (1914) and Phil-for-Short (1919), as well as several very early slapstick film comedies, the chapter pursues queer laughter as a historiographic method. It argues that potential queer subtexts emerge in tense conflict with their juxtaposition to offensive representations of blackface minstrelsy, patriarchal sexism, and capitalist class ideology. At once amusing and disturbing in their sexuality effects, these films provoke new intersectional strategies in queer critical reading.

scholarly journals The Sovereign Trickster

2019 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicente L. Rafael
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
The Other ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Blackface Minstrelsy ◽  
The One

In our current moment, authoritarian figures loom large. One of them is Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. He seems to embody two notions of sovereignty. One is related to law, the other to norms: on the one hand, the power of taking exception to the former, deciding who will live and who will die; on the other hand, the freedom from the limits of the latter by way of dissipation, irresponsibility, and excess. This article explores the double sources of his power with reference to the works of Michel Foucault and Achille Mbembe. While most of Foucault's work has focused on Europe, Mbembe has written about postcolonial conditions in ways that make critical use of Foucault. Drawing from their writings, this article situates Duterte as a “sovereign trickster” who seeks to dominate death while monopolizing laughter. Finally, this article speculates on the comparative usefulness of this figure of the sovereign trickster with regard to President Donald Trump, whose form of tricksterism derives, the author argues, from the tradition of blackface minstrelsy.

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