The Showman and the Slave
Race, Death, and Memory in Barnum's America
Published on 1. July 2009
288 pages
978-0-674-04265-0 (ISBN)
Description
Reiss uses P. T. Barnum's Joice Heth hoax to examine the race relations in the antebellum North. Barnum's first exhibit as a showman, Heth was an enslaved woman said to be the 161-year-old former nurse of the infant George Washington. The newly emerging commercial press turned her act into one of the first media spectacles in American history.
More details
Edition
Digital original
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, MA; London
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
US School Grade: College Graduate Student
Edition type
Digital original
ISBN-13
978-0-674-04265-0 (9780674042650)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
10/2001
Harvard University Press
€48.46
Article exhausted; check different version
Person
Benjamin Reiss is Professor of English, Emory University.
Content
Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: The Dark Subject I. Death and Dying 1. Possession 2. The Celebrated Curiosity 3. Private Acts, Public Memories 4. Sacred and Profane 5. Culture Wars 6. Love, Automata, and India Rubber 7. Spectacle II. Resurrection 8. Authenticity and Commodity 9. Exposure and Mastery 10. Erasure III. Life 11. A Speculative Biography Note to the 2010 Printing Notes Index
