Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910

489 Pages·2006·6.02 MB·English

by  Daphne A. Brooks

BODIES IN DISSENT

BODIES IN DISSENT
Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910
Daphne A. Brooks
Duke University Press Durham and London 2006
∫ 2006 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States
of America on acid-free paper $
Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan
Typeset in Minion by Keystone
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data and republication
acknowledgments appear on the last
printed page of this book.
Duke University Press gratefully
acknowledges the support of
Princeton University, which
provided funds toward the
production of this book.
For
Juanita Kathryn Watson Brooks
and in memory of
Nathaniel Hawthorne Brooks, Sr.

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Our Bodies, Our/Selves 14
Racial Phantasmagoria and Cultural Struggle
2. The Escape Artist 66
Henry Box Brown, Black Abolitionist Performance,
and Moving Panoramas of Slavery
3. ‘‘The Deeds Done in My Body’’ 131
Performance, Black(ened) Women, and
Adah Isaacs Menken in the Racial Imaginary
4. Alien/Nation 207
Re-Imagining the Black Body (Politic)
in Williams and Walker’s In Dahomey
5. Divas and Diasporic Consciousness 281
Song, Dance, and New Negro Womanhood in the Veil
Epilogue 343
Theatre, Black Women, and Change
Notes 349
Bibliography 417
Index 455

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project would have never been completed without the financial support
of several institutions and the counsel and encouragement of advisers, men-
tors, friends, and family during what, at times, seemed like an epic gestation
period. As a dissertation, the project was funded generously by the Mellon
Foundation, the University of California, Los Angeles, the Ford Foundation,
and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Studies Research at
Harvard University. Princeton University, the University of California, San
Diego, the President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation each financed my time
away from teaching so that I could complete revisions of the manuscript. I am
particularly grateful to the late Richard Newman, Lisa Thompson, the sta√ of
the Du Bois Institute and the entire ‘‘Couch’’ writing collective (Farah Gri≈n,
Guy Ramsey, Bill Lowe, and Salim Washington) for allowing me the oppor-
tunity to spend time cultivating this project in its earliest stages and in the
midst of an energetic and supportive scholarly community. Jane Gonzalez and
the U.C. President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship sta√ provided helpful assistance
to me during my two years of sabbatical research at the University of Califor-
nia, Berkeley. Many thanks as well to Richard Hope, Sylvia Sheridan, and Bill
Mitchell for organizing and overseeing the Woodrow Wilson’s vibrant and
nurturing Career Enhancement Program for junior faculty which provided
me with the necessary time to complete research on this project. A very special
thanks to Ken Wissoker for his patience, steady support, and editorial vision
and to Courtney Berger and the entire Duke University Press sta√ for oversee-
ing the development of this project.
Over the years, it has become apparent to me that an archivist’s best friend
is her librarian. For their generous time and diligent resourcefulness, I would
like to thank the wonderful library sta√s at the University of California,
Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manu-