The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, Performance
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.66 (566 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0226862526 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-03-21 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Shane Vogel is assistant professor of English at Indiana University.
That problem is now taken up again by Shane Vogel with the kind of rigorous critical imagination that would disturb and, finally, gratify Du Bois, forcing him literally and figuratively to attend (to) scenes he might otherwise strenuously have avoided. Du Bois took up what he called 'the problem of amusement' with prescience as well as reticence. E. "Evocative, elegant, and engrossing are words that characterize this lively study that resurrects the lush, smoke-filled atmosphere of Harlem cabarets. Happily, he gives us occasion once again to consider how the terrible ruses and potential reconstruction of democracy in America are marked, on the one hand, and initialized, on the other, in our ludic underground." --Fred Moten, Duke Uni
The cabaret scene, Shane Vogel contends, also played a key role in the Harlem Renaissance by offering an alternative to the politics of sexual respectability and racial uplift that sought to dictate the proper subject matter for black arts and letters. Deftly combining performance theory, literary criticism, historical research, and biographical study, The Scene of Harlem Cabaret brings this rich moment in history to life, while exploring the role of nightlife performance as a definitive touchstone for understanding the racial and sexual politics of the early twentieth century.. Harlem's nightclubs in the 1920s and '30s were a crucible for testing society's racial and sexual limits. Individually and collectively, luminaries such as Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Wallace Thurman, and Ethel Waters expanded the possibilities of blackness and sexuality in America, resulting in a queer nightlife that flourished in music, in print, and on stage. Normally tacit divisions were there made spectacularly public in the vibrant, but often fraught, relationship between performer and audience
Sunlyonis said Is This A Dissertation?. The information found here is unmatched. I appreciated having an opportunity to read queer history. I only gave it three stars because the way the information is organized and explicated is challenging. It read more like a social studies PHD level text book, rather than a nonfiction account of an exciting time.