Cultivating national identity through performance : American pleasure gardens and entertainment / Naomi J. Stubbs.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stubbs, Naomi J., 1981-

Series:

Palgrave studies in theatre and performance history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gardens--United States--History.

Gardens.

Gardens--Social aspects--United States.

Amusements--United States--History.

Amusements.

Performance art--United States--History.

Performance art.

History.

Gardens--Social aspects.

United States--Social life and customs.

United States.

Manners and customs.

Physical Description:

xii, 177 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Other Title:

American pleasure gardens and entertainment

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Summary:

Combining the charms of the country with the convenience of the city and delivering a healthy dose of both entertainment and education, American pleasure gardens were ubiquitous between the Revolution and the Civil War. Patrons of these entertainment venues would have expected to see plays, concerts, fairs, mechanical and artistic exhibits, fireworks, volcanic eruptions, and-perhaps more crucially-they would have expected to see and be seen. As outdoor entertainment venues in American cities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, pleasure gardens presented citizens with public spaces where they could explore what it meant to be American. The very nature of American pleasure gardens provided an effective location for the exploration of and experimentation with American identities, due to their nature as simultaneously rural and urban, modern and nostalgic, British and American, white and racialized, and democratic and class-conscious. Stubbs examines how these once popular venues helped form American identity using nation, class, race, and the agrarian ideal as touchstones and argues the gardens allowed for the exploration of what it meant to be American through performance, both on and off the stage. Book jacket.

Contents:

Performing nation: the pleasure gardens as a space for defining America

Performing place: the rural/urban tension

Performing class: the challenge to and reaffirmation of class divisions and hierarchies

Performing race: Native Americans and African Americans within the gardens

Beyond the pleasure garden.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [161]-171) and index.

ISBN:

9781137326867

1137326867

OCLC:

843857949