Racial Geometries of the Black Atlantic, Asian Pacific and American Theatre

How did Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado come to be performed with a black cast and a swing orchestra? How did Uncle Tom's Cabin become one of the first examples of spoken drama in China? Why did Paul Robeson begin to include Chinese songs in his concert repertoire? What did these performances say to Americans about racial formation at home, and why did the images of blackness in these examples so frequently refer to Asia?

Using original archival research, Racial Geometries examines the way images of blackness and Asianness were intertwined in US on- and off-stage performances between the two World Wars. In thinking of these performances as geometries, as a racialized way to measure the earth, we can attend more carefully to the ways racial formation occurs not through a simple spectrum, but through multiform structures that link national and racial groups in unusual ways.