{"id":44251,"date":"2015-11-27T01:28:24","date_gmt":"2015-11-27T01:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=44251"},"modified":"2016-05-09T21:35:23","modified_gmt":"2016-05-09T21:35:23","slug":"44251","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=44251","title":{"rendered":"\u201cMost Fitting Companions\u201d: Making Mixed-Race Bodies Visible in Antebellum Public Spaces"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1017\/S0040557415000046\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cMost Fitting Companions\u201d: Making Mixed-Race Bodies Visible in Antebellum Public Spaces<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/journals.cambridge.org\/action\/displayJournal?jid=TSY\" target=\"_blank\">Theatre Survey<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/journals.cambridge.org\/action\/displayIssue?iid=9682055\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 56, Issue 2, May 2015<\/a><br \/>\npages 138-165<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1017\/S0040557415000046\" target=\"_blank\">10.1017\/S0040557415000046<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hofstra.edu\/faculty\/fac_profiles.cfm?id=1007\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Lisa Merrill<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of Speech Communication, Rhetoric, Performance Studies<br \/>\n<em>Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In the years leading up to the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/American_Civil_War\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. Civil War<\/a>, free and fugitive persons of color were aware of the need to frame how they were seen in their everyday lives as part of an arsenal of rhetorical strategies to attract audiences to the abolitionist cause. In this article, I examine three spatial contexts that nineteenth-century mixed-race persons navigated for abolitionist ends in which their hybrid bodies were featured as an aspect of their public performances. These locations\u2014Britain&#8217;s imperially sponsored Crystal Palace, a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Brooklyn\" target=\"_blank\">Brooklyn<\/a> church pulpit, and the dramatic reader&#8217;s lectern\u2014were not merely static places but were spaces animated and made meaningful by the interactions performed therein. Each framed a particular ocular and locational politics and strategically imbued some degree of social class privilege on the hybrid persons following its social scripts. But in so doing, each setting also reinforced colorism and contributed to notions of the supremacy of \u201cwhiteness\u201d even while it furthered an antislavery agenda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cMost Fitting Companions\u201d: Making Mixed-Race Bodies Visible in Antebellum Public Spaces Theatre Survey Volume 56, Issue 2, May 2015 pages 138-165 DOI: 10.1017\/S0040557415000046 Lisa Merrill, Professor of Speech Communication, Rhetoric, Performance Studies Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York In the years leading up to the U.S. Civil War, free and fugitive persons of color were aware [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1196,8,6940,20],"tags":[22051,5487],"class_list":["post-44251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-lisa-merrill","tag-theatre-survey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44251","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=44251"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44253,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44251\/revisions\/44253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}