1st Edition

Object Performance in the Black Atlantic The United States

By Paulette Richards Copyright 2024
312 Pages 82 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

312 Pages 82 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

312 Pages 82 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Given that slaveholders prohibited the creation of African-style performing objects, is there a traceable connection between traditional African puppets, masks, and performing objects and contemporary African American puppetry? This study approaches the question by looking at the whole performance complex surrounding African performing objects and examines the material culture of object... Read more

Part 1: The African American Object Performance Complex  1. Introduction to the African American Object Performance Complex  2. Minkisi: Ritual Objects as Lines of Resistance  3. Mechanical Negroes  4. African American Story Cycles  5. The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Object Performance in African American Dance  6. Music is Our Mother Tongue: Object Performance in African American Music  Part 2: African American Object Performance Overcoming Jim Crow  7. From Minstrelsy to Vaudeville: John W. Cooper Crafts an Entrée  8. Shadows Uplifted: African American Object Performance under Jim Crow  9. Creating Communities  10. Throwing Voice: African American Ventriloquists  11. In the Image of God: Puppet Ministry and Object Performance in the Black Church  12. Political Activism and African American Object Performance  Part 3: Object Performance in African American Dramatic Presentations  13. African American Puppet Modernism: Alice Swann and the Wonderland Puppet Theatre  14. Staging Stories: African American Folktales and Puppet Theater  15. Object Performance in African American Visual Art  16. African Americans and Object Performance in American Theater  17. African American Puppet Film  18. African American Puppetry in Social Media  19. The Substance of Things Hoped for: Contemporary African American Puppet Theater

Biography

Paulette Richards is an independent researcher and puppet artist. Co-curator of the Living Objects: African American Puppetry exhibit at the University of Connecticut’s Ballard Institute and Museum with Dr. John Bell, she holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, USA.

Winner of the Nancy Staub Publications Award 2024.