Based on the author's thesis (doctoral)--New York University, 2011. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
Introduction. Burnt Cork Nationalism and the Five Waves of Minstrel Globalization -- Foundations: Blackface Minstrelsy in the United States and Across the British Empire, 1830-1862 -- An Empire of Burnt Cork: Blackface Minstrelsy in Pre-Industrial South Africa, 1862-1872 -- Diamonds, Dandies, and Dispossession: Minstrel Shows During the South African Mineral Revolution, 1872-1889 -- "Slipping the Yoke": McAdoo's Jubilee Singers, McAdoo's Minstrels, and Racial Uplift Politics, 1890-1898 -- Brown-on-Black Masquerade: Cape Town's Coon Carnival -- Afterword. Global Blackface: Toward Transnational Minstrelsy Studies
Summary:
"Following the pathways of imperial commerce, blackface minstrel troupes began to cross the globe in the mid-nineteenth century, popularizing American racial ideologies as they traveled from Britain to its colonies in the Pacific, Asia, and Oceania, finally landing in South Africa during the 1860s and 1870s. The first popular culture export of the United States, minstrel shows frequently portrayed black characters as noncitizens who were unfit for democratic participation and contributed to the construction of a global color line. Chinua Thelwell brings blackface minstrelsy and performance culture into the discussion of apartheid's nineteenth-century origins and afterlife, employing a broad archive of South African newspapers and magazines, memoirs, minstrel songs and sketches, diaries, and interview transcripts. Exporting Jim Crow highlights blackface minstrelsy's cultural and social impact as it became a dominant form of entertainment, moving from its initial appearances on music hall stages to its troubling twentieth-century resurgence on movie screens and at public events. This carefully researched and highly original study demonstrates that the performance of race in South Africa was inherently political, contributing to racism and shoring up white racial identity"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.