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About this book
The Whitman Sisters were the highest paid act on the Negro Vaudeville Circuit, Theater Owner Booking Association (Toby), and one of the longest surviving touring companies (1899-1942). The group was considered the greatest incubator of dancing talent for Negro shows on or off Toby, and significantly contributed to American theater and dance history. In The Royalty of Negro Vaudeville , Nadine George-Graves provides an historical narrative of their achievements and uses black feminist theories, feminist theories of performance, and theories of class and popular culture to analyze the many layers of performance in which the Whitman Sisters participated, on and off the stage. She shows that these four black women manipulated their race, gender and class to resist hegemonic forces while achieving success. By maintaining a high-class image, they were able to challenge fictions of racial and gender identity.
Keywords
- American studies
- culture
- dance
- dancing
- gender
- identity
- Narrative
- performance
- stage
- theatre
- Vaudeville
- women
Reviews
...first throughly researched and intelligent account of these forgotten women. Women's Review of Books
About the author
Nadine George Graves is Assistant Professor of Theater Studies at Yale University.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Royalty of Negro Vaudeville
Book Subtitle: The Whitman Sisters and the Negotiation of Race, Gender and Class in African American Theater 1900-1940
Authors: N. George-Graves
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Palgrave History Collection, History (R0)
Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2000
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-312-22562-9Published: 30 January 2003
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVIII, 183