The Showman and the Slave by Benjamin Reiss

The Showman and the Slave by Benjamin Reiss

In this story about one of the 19th century's most famous Americans, Benjamin Reiss uses P.T. Barnum's Joice Heth hoax to examine the contours of race relations in the antebellum North. Barnum's first exhibit as a showman, Heth was an elderly enslaved woman who was said to be the 161-year-old former nurse of the infant George Washington. Seizing upon the novelty, the newly emerging commercial press turned her act - and especially her death - into one of the first media spectacles in American history. In piecing together the fragmentary and conflicting evidence of the event, Reiss paints a picture of people looking at history, at the human body, at social class, at slavery, at performance, at death, and always - if obliquely - at themselves. At the same time, he reveals how deeply an obsession with race penetrated different facets of American life, from public memory to private fantasy. Concluding the book is a piece of historical detective work in which Reiss attempts to solve the puzzle of Heth's real identity before she met Barnum. His search yields a connection between early mass culture and a slave's subtle mockery of her master.

Shares in a long and distinguished tradition of social and cultural histories that transform 'ordinary' events in the past into extraordinary windows onto their worlds- Bryan J. Wolf, Yale University

Reiss, Benjamin: - Benjamin Reiss is associate professor of English at Emory University and the author of The Showman and the Slave: Race, Death, and Memory in Barnum's America.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780674006362
ISBN 10	0674006364
Titel	The Showman and the Slave
Autor	Benjamin Reiss
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	Harvard University Press
Erscheinungsjahr	2001-10-09
Seitenanzahl	288
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar