... Cody demonstrated every time he performed his acts of marksmanship and every time he staged t... more ... Cody demonstrated every time he performed his acts of marksmanship and every time he staged the violent rebuffing of the raid on the ... took his show to Europe, so that the European audiences might, in Cody's terms, “esteem us better.” Mohawk's celebrated play, Wep-Ton-No ...
J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, 2018
Abstract:This Forum explores nineteenth-century American theater and performance by putting press... more Abstract:This Forum explores nineteenth-century American theater and performance by putting pressure on each of the descriptive terms used—"nineteenth-century," "American," "theater," and "performance." The contributors to this Forum probe how these terms have come to prescribe the kinds of critical work that scholars engage in to talk about theater in the nineteenth century, even as they use the opportunity of the Forum to recover the heterogeneous and subversive ideas that lie behind, or beneath, or around these terms as well. Exploring "nineteenth-century" reveals the alternative temporalities that exist in Native American, Jewish, and African American performance. The idea of "American" becomes a spur for discussing the ways that blackface works in the nineteenth century to equate the notion of Americanness with whiteness. Dissecting the term "theater" reveals the myriad ephemeral but subversive theatrical experiences that interrogated more popular stage productions. Finally, exploring "performance" reveals the way that nineteenth-century performative gestures get performed and recalibrated in today's culture more generally. In this way, this Forum begins to highlight the richness of nineteenth-century American theater and performance by discovering this understudied medium drama as a provocative, even dangerous, engine for studying the long nineteenth century.
... Cody demonstrated every time he performed his acts of marksmanship and every time he staged t... more ... Cody demonstrated every time he performed his acts of marksmanship and every time he staged the violent rebuffing of the raid on the ... took his show to Europe, so that the European audiences might, in Cody's terms, “esteem us better.” Mohawk's celebrated play, Wep-Ton-No ...
Matthew Rebhorn, “Billy’s Fist: Neuroscience and Corporeal Reading in Melville’s Billy Budd” (pp.... more Matthew Rebhorn, “Billy’s Fist: Neuroscience and Corporeal Reading in Melville’s Billy Budd” (pp. 218–244) This essay explores the relationship between Herman Melville’s Billy Budd (published 1924) and late-nineteenth-century neuroscience—particularly works by Alexander Bain and George Henry Lewes—to argue that this novel advances a new way of reading the body. Inflected by Melville’s late encounter with Arthur Schopenhauer’s ruminations on “will power,” Melville uses neuroscience to develop Schopenhauer’s idea into what I am calling a “corporeal reading” practice. This is a reading practice, I argue, that erodes the ontological distinction between the mind and body, between the mind as subject and the body as mere object. Yet because Melville set this novel in wartime, this new reading practice also reveals the deep, and often deadly, tensions that accompany understanding the body as having a mind of its own. In this way, Billy Budd becomes a primer not only for expanding the notion of the bodily consciousness, but also for learning to read the political inflections of the animate body and its “will (to) power.”
... Cody demonstrated every time he performed his acts of marksmanship and every time he staged t... more ... Cody demonstrated every time he performed his acts of marksmanship and every time he staged the violent rebuffing of the raid on the ... took his show to Europe, so that the European audiences might, in Cody's terms, “esteem us better.” Mohawk's celebrated play, Wep-Ton-No ...
J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, 2018
Abstract:This Forum explores nineteenth-century American theater and performance by putting press... more Abstract:This Forum explores nineteenth-century American theater and performance by putting pressure on each of the descriptive terms used—"nineteenth-century," "American," "theater," and "performance." The contributors to this Forum probe how these terms have come to prescribe the kinds of critical work that scholars engage in to talk about theater in the nineteenth century, even as they use the opportunity of the Forum to recover the heterogeneous and subversive ideas that lie behind, or beneath, or around these terms as well. Exploring "nineteenth-century" reveals the alternative temporalities that exist in Native American, Jewish, and African American performance. The idea of "American" becomes a spur for discussing the ways that blackface works in the nineteenth century to equate the notion of Americanness with whiteness. Dissecting the term "theater" reveals the myriad ephemeral but subversive theatrical experiences that interrogated more popular stage productions. Finally, exploring "performance" reveals the way that nineteenth-century performative gestures get performed and recalibrated in today's culture more generally. In this way, this Forum begins to highlight the richness of nineteenth-century American theater and performance by discovering this understudied medium drama as a provocative, even dangerous, engine for studying the long nineteenth century.
... Cody demonstrated every time he performed his acts of marksmanship and every time he staged t... more ... Cody demonstrated every time he performed his acts of marksmanship and every time he staged the violent rebuffing of the raid on the ... took his show to Europe, so that the European audiences might, in Cody's terms, “esteem us better.” Mohawk's celebrated play, Wep-Ton-No ...
Matthew Rebhorn, “Billy’s Fist: Neuroscience and Corporeal Reading in Melville’s Billy Budd” (pp.... more Matthew Rebhorn, “Billy’s Fist: Neuroscience and Corporeal Reading in Melville’s Billy Budd” (pp. 218–244) This essay explores the relationship between Herman Melville’s Billy Budd (published 1924) and late-nineteenth-century neuroscience—particularly works by Alexander Bain and George Henry Lewes—to argue that this novel advances a new way of reading the body. Inflected by Melville’s late encounter with Arthur Schopenhauer’s ruminations on “will power,” Melville uses neuroscience to develop Schopenhauer’s idea into what I am calling a “corporeal reading” practice. This is a reading practice, I argue, that erodes the ontological distinction between the mind and body, between the mind as subject and the body as mere object. Yet because Melville set this novel in wartime, this new reading practice also reveals the deep, and often deadly, tensions that accompany understanding the body as having a mind of its own. In this way, Billy Budd becomes a primer not only for expanding the notion of the bodily consciousness, but also for learning to read the political inflections of the animate body and its “will (to) power.”
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