{"id":17654,"date":"2011-11-02T03:34:04","date_gmt":"2011-11-02T03:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=17654"},"modified":"2011-11-14T00:07:57","modified_gmt":"2011-11-14T00:07:57","slug":"crimes-of-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=17654","title":{"rendered":"Crimes of Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1080\/10999949.2011.551476\" target=\"_blank\">Crimes of Performance<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/loi\/usou20\" target=\"_blank\">Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/toc\/usou20\/13\/1\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 13, Issue 1<\/a> (2011)<br \/>\nSpecial Issue: Black Critiques of Capital: Radicalism, Resistance, and Visions of Social Justice<br \/>\npages 29-45<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1080\/10999949.2011.551476\" target=\"_blank\">10.1080\/10999949.2011.551476<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.english.ucla.edu\/index.php\/Faculty\/mcmillan-uri\" target=\"_blank\">Uri McMillan<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of English<br \/>\n<em>University of California, Los Angeles<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In this article, I focus on the intersections between discourses of crime and illegality with modes of performance in the multiple impersonations staged by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ellen_and_William_Craft\" target=\"_blank\">William and Ellen Craft<\/a>, two married fugitive slaves who escaped from chattel slavery in the United States in 1848 through a complex set of layered performances. I begin illustrating the linkages between crime and performance by tracing the workings of a dynamic I term \u201cfugitive transvestism\u201d in an aesthetic representation of Ellen Craft, specifically an engraving she posed for in 1851 that was later published in <em>The London Illustrated News<\/em>. In doing so, I not only reveal the engraving as a site where we can witness Craft&#8217;s embodied performances, rather than a seemingly static document, but also focus on the crimes of \u201cbeing\u201d acted by Craft that surface in the engraving itself. In addition, I further reveal the performative and criminal acts committed by Ellen Craft, by later moving to a discussion of prosthetics, focusing attention on the mechanisms of Craft&#8217;s escape costume. Prosthetic performances, as I discuss them, were dramatic and tactical strategies employed by the Crafts that continue to reveal the suturing of crime and performance in Ellen Craft&#8217;s counterfeit embodiment of her alter-ego, while taking it further into yet another set of unlawful impersonations. Thus, this essay will evince how the Craft&#8217;s multiple crimes of performance enabled their mobility across 19th-century spatial sites and representational spheres.<\/p>\n<p>Read or purchase the article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/pdf\/10.1080\/10999949.2011.551476\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Crimes of Performance Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society Volume 13, Issue 1 (2011) Special Issue: Black Critiques of Capital: Radicalism, Resistance, and Visions of Social Justice pages 29-45 DOI: 10.1080\/10999949.2011.551476 Uri McMillan, Assistant Professor of English University of California, Los Angeles In this article, I focus on the intersections between [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1196,8,6462,6940,20],"tags":[88,2751,1995,5076,1052],"class_list":["post-17654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-ellen-craft","tag-souls","tag-souls-a-critical-journal-of-black-politics-culture-and-society","tag-uri-mcmillan","tag-william-craft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}