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From Library Journal
As a virtually unrevised but exceptionally thorough dissertation focusing on a narrow slice of African American culture and making use of extensive poststructuralist, semiotic, and postcolonial theory, Krasner's study is clearly intended for specialists. In examining productions by African American theatrical companies in the period following the zenith of minstrelsy, Krasner (theater studies, Yale) proposes that various techniques (e.g., parody) and an overall Du Boisian double consciousness were used by several major performers to resist the worsening racism while not alienating white audiences. Krasner's combination of extensive archival research and far-ranging knowledge provides an exhilarating intellectual experience for advanced scholars; the chapter on the social construction of cakewalking is particularly brilliant. Institutions supporting advanced degrees in American theater or African American studies should certainly acquire this. Although written from a musicological perspective, Thomas L. Riis's Just Before Jazz: Black Musical Theatre in New York, 1890-1915 (LJ 11/1/89) is a somewhat more accessible study suitable for lay readers.?Robert W. Melton, Univ. of Kansas Libs., Lawrence
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First Sentence:
THE PURPOSE OF THIS WORK is to explore African American theatre as it existed from 1895 to 1910, with an emphasis on its resistance to racism, the emergence of parody, and the use of what W. E. B. Du Bois called "double consciousness" (1903:215). Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
early black theatre, black musical theatre, minstrel theatre, overlapping diasporas, many black performers, theatre semiotics, racial signs, racial authenticity, black folk culture, black spectators, white producers, dialect poetry, white spectators Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
African American, New York, The Red Moon, Bandanna Land, George Walker, The Cannibal King, The Shoo Fly Regiment, Bert Williams, New Negro, Jes Lak White F'lks, United States, Jim Crow, Bob Cole, James Weldon Johnson, Indianapolis Freeman, Native Americans, Lester Walton, Aida Overton Walker, Will Marion Cook, Aida Walker, Ernest Hogan, The Creole Show, Thomas Rus, Lawrence Levine, Sylvester Russell New!
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