Despite the recent flood of scholarly work investigating the interrelated issues of race, gender, and representation, little has been written about black women s depictions of their own bodies. Both past and present-day American cultural discourse has attempted either to hypereroticize the black female body or make it a site of impropriety and crime.The essays in this volume focus on how African American women, from the nineteenth century to the present, have represented their physical selves in opposition to the distorted vision of others. Contributors attempt to recover the black female...

"An arresting book that juxtaposes major and minor antebellum texts to develop its own democratic discourse. Michael Bennett writes with verve and brio, and offers some juicy surprises."--David Leverenz, University of Florida

Ever since the hallowed statement, "All men are created equal," was penned in the Declaration of Independence, it has become a historical tenet that freedom and equality were brought to American shores by the so-called Founding Fathers.

In this path-breaking study, Michael Bennett departs from tradition to argue that the democratic ideal of equality and the...

Cities are often thought to be separate from nature, but recent trends in ecocriticism demand that we consider them as part of the total environment. This new collection of essays sharpens the focus on the nature of cities by exploring the facets of an urban ecocriticism, by reminding city dwellers of their place in ecosystems, and by emphasizing the importance of this connection in understanding urban life and culture. The editors--both raised in small towns but now living in major urban areas--are especially concerned with the sociopolitical construction of all environments, both...

(Applause Libretto Library). It is hard to believe that over 25 years have passed since A Chorus Line first electrified a New York audience. The memories of the show's birth in 1975, not to mention those of its 15-year-life and poignant death, remain incandescent and not just because nothing so exciting has happened to the American musical since. For a generation of theater people and theatergoers, A Chorus Line was and is the touchstone that defines the glittering promise, more often realized in lengend than in reality, of the Broadway way. This impressive book contains the complete book and...