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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Spectacles Of Reform: Theater And Activism In Nineteenth-Century America By Amy E. Hughes (Review), Jocelyn Buckner
Spectacles Of Reform: Theater And Activism In Nineteenth-Century America By Amy E. Hughes (Review), Jocelyn Buckner
Theatre Faculty Articles and Research
In Spectacles of Reform Amy Hughes advocates for “spectacle as methodology” (4), a means of interpreting spectacle in nineteenth-century melodrama, as well as a wide variety of other media, that rehearses and reforms concepts of citizenship and identity related to race, class, gender, and morality. Through this lens, Hughes seeks to answer the questions “where and how do activist spectacles appear before and beyond the theatrical encounter?” and “why is spectacle kept alive through reinvention, revision, and repetition long after the drama is over?” (5). Hughes traces her theory of the spectacular instant through three popular sensation themes of the …