Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century America: Revolution, Race and Popular Performance

Hardback

Main Details

Title Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century America: Revolution, Race and Popular Performance
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Peter Reed
SeriesCambridge Studies in Modern Theatre
Physical Properties
Format:Hardback
Pages:231
Dimensions(mm): Height 229,Width 152
Category/GenreDrama
Literary studies - c 1800 to c 1900
ISBN/Barcode 9781009100526
ClassificationsDewey:812.009
Audience
Tertiary Education (US: College)
Illustrations Worked examples or Exercises

Publishing Details

Publisher Cambridge University Press
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publication Date 1 December 2022
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

American culture maintained a complicated relationship with Haiti from its revolutionary beginnings onward. In this study, Peter P. Reed reveals how Americans embodied and re-enacted their connections to Haiti through a wide array of performance forms. In the wake of Haiti's slave revolts in the 1790s, generations of actors, theatre professionals, spectators, and commentators looked to Haiti as a source of both inspiring freedom and vexing disorder. French colonial refugees, university students, Black theatre stars, blackface minstrels, abolitionists, and even writers such as Herman Melville all reinvented and restaged Haiti in distinctive ways. Reed demonstrates how Haiti's example of Black freedom and national independence helped redefine American popular culture, as actors and audiences repeatedly invoked and suppressed Haiti's revolutionary narratives, characters, and themes. Ultimately, Haiti shaped generations of performances, transforming America's understandings of race, power, freedom, and violence in ways that still reverberate today.

Author Biography

Peter P. Reed is Associate Professor of Early American Literature at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of Rogue Performances (2009) as well as essays on Black Atlantic performance, theatre culture, and Haiti's impact on American culture.