THTR 416 Constructing America through 19th-century Performance
During the 19th century, the United States experienced massive immigration, industrialization, urbanization, westward expansion, and a Civil War, all developments that significantly impacted the nation’s theatre. In particular, this century witnessed a boom in popular theatre forms that not only impacted theatrical production, but that were also instrumental in constructing notions of race, ethnicity, nationalism, childhood, gender, class, ability, propriety, and sexuality. These notions were not only often specific to the U.S. context but they also continue to influence American culture into the present. In this course, students examine these concepts by studying popular performance forms like blackface minstrelsy, vaudeville, melodrama, sideshows, burlesque, Pleasure Gardens, and Wild West Shows. In doing so, students learn how forms of racism, white supremacy, and discrimination that continue to exist today were institutionalized in the U.S. and how popular performances were critical to both bolstering and challenging that process.