Author: Marvin McAllister File Type: pdf In the early 1890s, black performer Bob Cole turned blackface minstrelsy on its head with his nationally recognized whiteface creation, a character he called Willie Wayside. Just over a century later, hiphop star Busta Rhymes performed a whiteface supercop in his hit music video Dangerous. In this sweeping work, Marvin McAllister explores the enduring tradition of whiting up, in which African American actors, comics, musicians, and even everyday people have studied and assumed white racial identities. Not to be confused with racial passing or derogatory notions of acting white, whiting up is a deliberate performance strategy designed to challenge Americas racial and political hierarchies by transferring supposed markers of whiteness to black bodies--creating unexpected intercultural alliances even as it sharply critiques racial stereotypes. Along with conventional theater, McAllister considers a variety of other live performance modes, including weekly promenading rituals, antebellum cakewalks, solo performance, and standup comedy. For over three centuries, whiting up as allowed African American artists to appropriate white cultural production, fashion new black identities through these white forms, and advance our collective ability to locate ourselves in others. **Review Whiting Up . . . interrogates the many contributions of African Americans to popular American entertainment.--Journal of American History A compelling and highly readable study that makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of racial identity in American popular entertainment.--Journal of American Studies Discusses a fascinating and understudied segment of race in America. . . . Adds a welcome layer of complexity.--H-South The first full-length study of a heretofore slighted, largely ignored subversive performative phenomenon. . . . Highly recommended. All readers.--Choice Review In this exciting new book, Marvin McAllister rewardingly investigates the fascinating theatrical history of what he terms whiting up. Moving from the colonial and antebellum periods to contemporary solo performance and standup comedy, McAllister deftly constructs a genealogy of black performers in whiteface and of black actors playing white identified characters. He reveals how these performers and performances potently contribute to the ongoing dialogue on the relationship between race and representation. Whiting Up is an important and bold study that provides critical insight into how race has been and continues to be performed.--Harry J. Elam Jr., Stanford University Ambitious in scope, meticulously researched, and written in a thoroughly engaging style, Whiting Up is a much-needed cultural analysis of African-American whiteface performance--cakewalks, Sunday promenades, acting, and comedy shows--from the late eighteenth century to the present. This book will have a major impact on cultural studies, performance studies, African American studies, critical race studies, and literary criticism.--Malini Johar Schueller, University of Florida, author of Locating Race Global Sites of Post-Colonial Citizenship and U.S. Orientalisms Race, Nation and Gender in Literature, 17901890

Author: Stephen Heath File Type: pdf font face=Noto Sans [unknown], serifspan 12pxStephen Heath (2004)spanfont

Author: Kirsten A. Fenton File Type: pdf William of Malmesbury is one of the most important English historians of the twelfth century -- not only a critical period in English history, but also one that has been recognised as significant in terms of the writing of history and the construction of a national past. This innovative study provides a gendered reading of Malmesburys works with special reference to the themes of conquest and nation. It considers Malmesburys presentation of men and women (both lay and religious) through categories based on attributes, such as sexual behaviour and violence, rather than the more familiar `professional or familial roles, such as warrior and wife. It is also concerned with language and how the topics of conquest and nation are discussed in gendered terms. Importantly, attention is paid to Malmesburys own position as a post-conquest chronicler, writing at a time of church reform, and to the impact the changes had upon the construction of the stories he narrates. **Review Fentons close reading of William of Malmesbury is often thoughtful and effective. SPECULUM (A) precise and poignant - and immensely readable - study. (It) rewards its readers with numerous fascinating insights, and it raises questions relevant for our understanding not only of Malmesbury but also of the wider context within which he wrote. (...) One hopes that more studies on the subject will follow, and that they will match the sophistication, intelligence and lucidity of this fascinating and important book. HISTORY Those who come fresh to William of Malmesbury through this book will undoubtedly want to read more of him those already familiar with his work will find Fentons novel approach suggestive with considerable potential for development. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (An) innovative study. ANGLO-SAXON ANONYMOUS, About the Author KIRSTEN A. FENTON holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh.

Author: Paul F. Berliner File Type: epub A landmark in jazz studies, Thinking in Jazz reveals as never before how musicians, both individually and collectively, learn to improvise. Chronicling leading musicians from their first encounters with jazz to the development of a unique improvisatory voice, Paul Berliner documents the lifetime of preparation that lies behind the skilled improvisers every idea. The product of more than fifteen years of immersion in the jazz world, Thinking in Jazz combines participant observation with detailed musicological analysis, the authors experience as a jazz trumpeter, interpretations of published material by scholars and performers, and, above all, original data from interviews with more than fifty professional musicians bassists George Duvivier and Rufus Reid drummers Max Roach, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Akira Tana guitarist Emily Remler pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris saxophonists Lou Donaldson, Lee Konitz, and James Moody trombonist Curtis Fuller trumpeters Doc Cheatham, Art Farmer, Wynton Marsalis, and Red Rodney vocalists Carmen Lundy and Vea Williams and others. Together, the interviews provide insight into the production of jazz by great artists like Betty Carter, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, and Charlie Parker. Thinking in Jazz overflows with musical examples from the 1920s to the present, including original transcriptions (keyed to commercial recordings) of collective improvisations by Miles Daviss and John Coltranes groups. These transcriptions provide additional insight into the structure and creativity of jazz improvisation and represent a remarkable resource for jazz musicians as well as students and educators. Berliner explores the alternative waysaural, visual, kinetic, verbal, emotional, theoretical, associativein which these performers conceptualize their music and describes the delicate interplay of soloist and ensemble in collective improvisation. Berliners skillful integration of data concerning musical development, the rigorous practice and thought artists devote to jazz outside of performance, and the complexities of composing in the moment leads to a new understanding of jazz improvisation as a language, an aesthetic, and a tradition. This unprecedented journey to the heart of the jazz tradition will fascinate and enlighten musicians, musicologists, and jazz fans alike.