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Full-Text Articles in American Literature
Keep Claiming Space!, Koritha Mitchell
Keep Claiming Space!, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
Substantial foreword to the "Hands Up. Don't Shoot!" special issue of CLAJ.
Black-Authored Lynching Drama’S Challenge To Theater History, Koritha Mitchell
Black-Authored Lynching Drama’S Challenge To Theater History, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
This essay argues that U.S. theater history is incomplete without considering the theatricality of lynching. Thomas Dixon Jr. was as important as a playwright as the early stage realists William Gillette and William Moody. The essay also demonstrates that African Americans living at the height of mob violence understood that there was a "theater/lynching alliance" that created important parallels between "lynchcraft" and "stagecraft."
Love In Action: Noting Similarities Between Lynching Then & Anti-Lgbt Violence Now, Koritha Mitchell
Love In Action: Noting Similarities Between Lynching Then & Anti-Lgbt Violence Now, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
The more I learn about the violence currently plaguing LGBT communities, the more it reminds me of the brutal practice of lynching, which has been the focus my research for the past 15 years. Ultimately, both forms of violence are designed to deny targeted groups recognition as citizens. Relying on my expertise regarding racial violence as well as the data on anti-LGBT attacks collected by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), this essay notes similarities between lynching at the last turn of the century and anti-LGBT violence today. The piece identifies five parallels: 1) the mundane quality of the …
James Baldwin, Performance Theorist, Sings The Blues For Mister Charlie, Koritha Mitchell
James Baldwin, Performance Theorist, Sings The Blues For Mister Charlie, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
James Baldwin worked tirelessly to expose the myths that allowed Americans to delude themselves. Scholars have long recognized this as the driving force of his fiction and non-fiction, but this mission was also very much linked to Baldwin's conception of theater. This essay culls Baldwin's theater theory from his non-fiction, especially his seldom-discussed The Devil Finds Work (1976). Baldwin believed that theater could "re-create" people by helping us to re-discover our human connection, and he believed that stage actors could show the way. Baldwin's respect for stage actors develops over time, however. He reaches his conclusions only after realizing—in hindsight—how …
Sisters In Motherhood(?): The Politics Of Race And Gender In Lynching Drama, Koritha Mitchell
Sisters In Motherhood(?): The Politics Of Race And Gender In Lynching Drama, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
Chapter analyzing May Miller's Nails and Thorns, a lynching play not discussed in my book LIVING WITH LYNCHING.
(Anti-)Lynching Plays: Angelina Weld Grimké, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, And The Evolution Of African American Drama, Koritha Mitchell
(Anti-)Lynching Plays: Angelina Weld Grimké, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, And The Evolution Of African American Drama, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
My initial articulation of the history of black-authored lynching plays and their tendency to avoid portraying physical violence.