Michael Jackson And The Blackface Mask

Download Michael Jackson And The Blackface Mask full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Michael Jackson And The Blackface Mask ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask

Author : Harriet J. Manning
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317096886
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask by : Harriet J. Manning

Download or read book Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask written by Harriet J. Manning and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blackface minstrelsy, the nineteenth-century performance practice in which ideas and images of blackness were constructed and theatricalized by and for whites, continues to permeate contemporary popular music and its audience. Harriet J. Manning argues that this legacy is nowhere more evident than with Michael Jackson in whom minstrelsy’s gestures and tropes are embedded. During the nineteenth century, blackface minstrelsy held together a multitude of meanings and when black entertainers took to the stage this complexity was compounded: minstrelsy became an arena in which black stereotypes were at once enforced and critiqued. This body of contradiction behind the blackface mask provides an effective approach to try and understand Jackson, a cultural figure about whom more questions than answers have been generated. Symbolized by his own whiteface mask, Jackson was at once ’raced’ and raceless and this ambiguity allowed him to serve a whole host of others’ needs - a function of the mask that has run long and deep through its tortuous history. Indeed, Manning argues that minstrelsy’s assumptions and uses have been fundamental to the troubles and controversies with which Jackson was beset.

Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask

Author : Harriet Josephine Manning
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (739 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask by : Harriet Josephine Manning

Download or read book Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask written by Harriet Josephine Manning and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask

Author : Harriet J. Manning
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000894517
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask by : Harriet J. Manning

Download or read book Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask written by Harriet J. Manning and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-16 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Jackson challenged the power structure of the American music industry and struck at the heart of blackface minstrelsy, America’s first form of mass entertainment. The response was a derisive caricature that over time Jackson subverted through his art. In this expanded, all-new edition, Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask argues for the tangible relationship between Jackson and blackface minstrelsy. It reveals the dialogue at minstrelsy’s core and, in its broader sense, tracks a centuries-long pattern of racial oppression and its resistance and how that has been played out in popular theatre. Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask explores Jackson’s early talent and fame and the birth and escalation of ‘Wacko Jacko’. In relation to all this, the book examines Jackson’s dynamic art as it evolved, from his live performances and short films to the very surface of his own body. Scholarly and interdisciplinary, this work is suitable for readers across a diverse spectrum of academic fields, including African American studies, popular music studies and cultural theory, media and communication, gender studies and performance and theatre studies. Academic but accessible, this book will also be an engaging read for anyone interested in Michael Jackson and especially in his role as an icon of difference, in America’s dynamics of race and his mass media image.

Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask

Author : Dr Harriet J Manning
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN 13 : 1472402367
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (724 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask by : Dr Harriet J Manning

Download or read book Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask written by Dr Harriet J Manning and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-08-31 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blackface minstrelsy, the nineteenth-century performance practice in which ideas and images of blackness were constructed and theatricalized by and for whites, continues to permeate contemporary popular music and its audience. Harriet J. Manning argues that this legacy is nowhere more evident than with Michael Jackson in whom minstrelsy’s gestures and tropes are embedded. During the nineteenth century, blackface minstrelsy held together a multitude of meanings and when black entertainers took to the stage this complexity was compounded: minstrelsy became an arena in which black stereotypes were at once enforced and critiqued. This body of contradiction behind the blackface mask provides an effective approach to try and understand Jackson, a cultural figure about whom more questions than answers have been generated. Symbolized by his own whiteface mask, Jackson was at once ‘raced’ and raceless and this ambiguity allowed him to serve a whole host of others’ needs - a function of the mask that has run long and deep through its tortuous history. Indeed, Manning argues that minstrelsy’s assumptions and uses have been fundamental to the troubles and controversies with which Jackson was beset.

The Dangerous Philosophies of Michael Jackson

Author : Elizabeth Amisu
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (16 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Dangerous Philosophies of Michael Jackson by : Elizabeth Amisu

Download or read book The Dangerous Philosophies of Michael Jackson written by Elizabeth Amisu and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential companion to Michael Jackson's music, films, and books, this work offers 21 original, academic essays on all things Jackson-from film, music, and dance to fashion, culture, and literature. Going well beyond the average celebrity biography, this comprehensive book looks at why Jackson is regarded as one of the most important musicians of our time, offering insights into every facet of his art, life, and artistic afterlife. It looks at the methods by which his work was created, presented, received, and appropriated; discusses Jackson's varied personas along with his public and private appearances, albums, conceptual art, short films, and dance; and considers his use of costume, makeup, and reinvention. To help readers understand the phenomenon that was-and is-Michael Jackson, the book focuses on Jackson's historical context through an analysis of his films, songs, and books, examining him as an artist and shedding light on the political and ideological debates that surrounded him. Not shying away from the controversial aspects of Jackson's life and legacy, it also tackles questions of sexuality and racism, gender, and class, comparing Jackson to artists ranging from J. S. Bach to Andy Warhol. Through its examination of Jackson's entire catalog, the work connects all the aspects of his art and life to exemplify-and explain-the performer's unparalleled influence in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Michael Jackson's Dangerous

Author : Susan Fast
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1623561027
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (235 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Michael Jackson's Dangerous by : Susan Fast

Download or read book Michael Jackson's Dangerous written by Susan Fast and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dangerous is Michael Jackson's coming of age album. Granted, that's a bold claim to make given that many think his best work lay behind him by the time this record was made. It offers Jackson on a threshold, at long last embracing adulthood-politically questioning, sexually charged-yet unable to convince a skeptical public who had, by this time, been wholly indoctrinated by a vicious media. Even though the record sold well, few understood or were willing to accept the depth and breadth of Jackson's vision; and then before it could be fully grasped, it was eclipsed by a shifting pop music landscape and personal scandal-the latter perhaps linked to his assertive new politics. This book tries to cut through the din of dominant narratives about Jackson, taking up the mature, nuanced artistic statement he offered on Dangerous in all its complexity. It is read here as a concept album, one that offers a compelling narrative arc of postmodern angst, love, lust, seduction, betrayal, damnation, and above all else racial politics, in ways heretofore unseen in his music. This record offered a Michael Jackson that was mystifying for a world that had accepted him as a child and as childlike and, hence, as safe; this Michael Jackson was, indeed, dangerous.

Mistakes, Errors and Failures across Cultures

Author : Elisabeth Vanderheiden
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030355748
Total Pages : 624 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (33 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Mistakes, Errors and Failures across Cultures by : Elisabeth Vanderheiden

Download or read book Mistakes, Errors and Failures across Cultures written by Elisabeth Vanderheiden and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-03-14 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides comprehensible, strength-based perspectives on contemporary research and practice related to navigating mistakes, errors and failures across cultures. It addresses these concepts across cultural contexts and explores any or all of these three concepts from a positive psychology or positive organisational perspective, highlighting their potential as resources. The volume further discusses the consequences of errors and failures at individual, organisational and societal levels, ranging from severe personal problems to organisational and collective crises, perspectives how those can be turned into opportunities for contingent and sustainable improvement processes. The book shows that there are significant cultural differences in the understanding, interpretation and handling of errors and failures. This volume provides practical guidance for transcultural understanding of mistakes, errors and failure through new models, ideas for self-reflection, therapeutic and counselling interventions and organisational change management processes. This book is a must for researchers and practitioners working on mistakes, errors and failures across cultures and disciplines!

Death and the Rock Star

Author : Catherine Strong
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317154509
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Death and the Rock Star by : Catherine Strong

Download or read book Death and the Rock Star written by Catherine Strong and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untimely deaths of Amy Winehouse (2011) and Whitney Houston (2012), and the ’resurrection’ of Tupac Shakur for a performance at the Coachella music festival in April 2012, have focused the media spotlight on the relationship between popular music, fame and death. If the phrase ’sex, drugs and rock’n’roll’ ever qualified a lifestyle, it has left many casualties in its wake, and with the ranks of dead musicians growing over time, so the types of death involved and the reactions to them have diversified. Conversely, as many artists who fronted the rock’n’roll revolution of the 1950s and 1960s continue to age, the idea of dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse (which gave rise, for instance, to the myth of the ’27 Club’) no longer carries the same resonance that it once might have done. This edited collection explores the reception of dead rock stars, ’rock’ being taken in the widest sense as the artists discussed belong to the genres of rock’n’roll (Elvis Presley), disco (Donna Summer), pop and pop-rock (Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse), punk and post-punk (GG Allin, Ian Curtis), rap (Tupac Shakur), folk (the Dutchman André Hazes) and ’world’ music (Fela Kuti). When music artists die, their fellow musicians, producers, fans and the media react differently, and this book brings together their intertwining modalities of reception. The commercial impact of death on record sales, copyrights, and print media is considered, and the different justifications by living artists for being involved with the dead, through covers, sampling and tributes. The cultural representation of dead singers is investigated through obituaries, biographies and biopics, observing that posthumous fame provides coping mechanisms for fans, and consumers of popular culture more generally, to deal with the knowledge of their own mortality. Examining the contrasting ways in which male and female dead singers are portrayed in the media, the book

Unfinished Business

Author : Judith Hamera
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019934860X
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Unfinished Business by : Judith Hamera

Download or read book Unfinished Business written by Judith Hamera and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does structural economic change look and feel? How are such changes normalized? Who represents hope? Who are the cautionary tales? Unfinished Business argues that U.S. deindustrialization cannot be understood apart from issues of race, and specifically apart from images of, and works by and about African Americans that represent or resist normative or aberrant relationships to work and capital in transitional times. It insists that Michael Jackson's performances and coverage of his life, plays featuring Detroit, plans for the city's postindustrial revitalization, and Detroit installations The Heidelberg Project and Mobile Homestead have something valuable to teach us about three decades of structural economic transition in the U.S., particularly about the changing nature of work and capitalism between the mid 1980s and 2016. Jackson and Detroit offer examples of the racialization of deindustrialization, how it operates as a structure of feeling and as representations as well as a shift in the dominant mode of production, and how industrialization's successor mode, financialization, uses imagery both very similar to and very different from its predecessor.

Soda Goes Pop

Author : Joanna Love
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472054023
Total Pages : 331 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (72 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Soda Goes Pop by : Joanna Love

Download or read book Soda Goes Pop written by Joanna Love and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2019-07-22 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its 1939 “Nickel, Nickel” jingle to pathbreaking collaborations with Michael Jackson and Madonna to its pair of X Factor commercials in 2011 and 2012, Pepsi-Cola has played a leading role in drawing the American pop music industry into a synergetic relationship with advertising. This idea has been copied successfully by countless other brands over the years, and such commercial collaboration is commonplace today—but how did we get here? How and why have pop music aesthetics been co-opted to benefit corporate branding? What effect have Pepsi’s music marketing practices in particular had on other brands, the advertising industry, and popular music itself? Soda Goes Pop investigates these and other vital questions around the evolving relationships between popular music and corporate advertising. Joanna K. Love joins musical analysis, historical research, and cultural theory to trace parallel shifts in these industries over eight decades. In addition to scholarly and industry resources, she draws on first-hand accounts, pop culture magazines, trade press journals, and other archival materials. Pepsi’s longevity as an influential American brand, its legendary commercials, and its pioneering, relentless pursuit of alliances with American musical stars makes the brand a particularly instructive point of focus. Several of the company’s most famous ad campaigns are prime examples of the practice of redaction, whereby marketers select, censor, and restructure musical texts to fit commercial contexts in ways that revise their aesthetic meanings and serve corporate aims. Ultimately, Love demonstrates how Pepsi’s marketing has historically appropriated and altered images of pop icons and the meanings of hit songs, and how these commercials shaped relationships between the American music business, the advertising industry, and corporate brands. Soda Goes Pop is a rich resource for scholars and students of American studies, popular culture, advertising, broadcast media, and musicology. It is also an accessible and informative book for the general reader, as Love’s musical and theoretical analyses are clearly presented for non-specialist audiences and readers with varying degrees of musical knowledge.

The Future of the Nineteenth-Century Dream-Child

Author : Amy Billone
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317381912
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (173 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Future of the Nineteenth-Century Dream-Child by : Amy Billone

Download or read book The Future of the Nineteenth-Century Dream-Child written by Amy Billone and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-10 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the reappearance of the 19th-century dream-child from the Golden Age of Children's Literature, both in the Harry Potter series and in other works that have reached unprecedented levels of popular success today. Discussing Harry Potter as a reincarnation of Lewis Carroll's Alice and J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, Billone goes on to examine the recent resurrection of Alice in Tim Burton's Alice, and of Peter Pan in Michael Jackson and in James Bond. Visiting trends that have emerged since the Harry Potter series ended, the book studies revisions of the dream-child in texts and films that have inspired mass fandom in the twenty-first century: Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, E.L. James's 50 Shades of Grey and Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games. The volume argues that the 21st-century desire to achieve dream-states in relationship to eternal youth results from the way that dreams provide a means of realizing the fantastic yet alarming possibility of escaping from time. This current identification with the dream-child stems from the threat of political unrest and economic and environmental collapse as well as from the simultaneous technophilia and technophobia of a culture immersed in the breathless revolution of the digital age. This book not only explores how the dream-child from the past has returned to reflect misgivings about imagined dystopian futures but also reveals how the rebirth of the dream-child opens up possibilities for new narratives where happy endings remain viable against all odds. It will appeal to scholars in a wide variety of fields including Childhood Studies, Children's/YA Literature, Cinema Studies, Cultural Studies, Cyberculture, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Gothic Studies, New Media, and Popular Culture.

Facial Choreographies

Author : Sherril Dodds
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019762037X
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (976 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Facial Choreographies by : Sherril Dodds

Download or read book Facial Choreographies written by Sherril Dodds and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-12-12 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The face contributes a vital, yet often overlooked, component of dance performance. Facial Choreographies: Performing the Face in Popular Dance examines what the face does in dance and what it may mean. Author Sherril Dodds focuses on popular presentational dance, which permits the face to be one of excess and spectacle, as well as disclosure or deception. The concept of facial choreography resists the idea that the expressive countenance in dance is simply by chance, and instead conceives its movement as purposeful, creative, and communicative. The book centers on three facial case studies: global celebrity Michael Jackson, whose face has occupied a site of fervent controversy; Maddie Ziegler, child star of the reality television series Dance Moms and de facto face of pop star Sia; and a community of hip hop dancers who engage in fiercely contested dance battles. Chapters are organized according to action-expressions, actively working even in times of stillness: SMILE, LOOK, FROWN, CRY, SCREAM, and LAUGH. Across each case study, the book explores pedagogies of facial composition, the purpose of codified expressions, and how dancers re-choreograph their faces as a critical unworking of what a dancing visage might represent. Facial choreographies engender opportunity for startling creativity, the articulation of identity, a cathartic expression of emotions and attitudes, and the capacity to dismantle previously held assumptions. As the dancing face tauntingly slips between visual, sensory, and kinetic registers it ensures that nothing can be taken at face value.

Michael Jackson, the Man Behind the Mask

Author : Bob Jones
Publisher : Select Books Inc.
ISBN 13 : 9781590790724
Total Pages : 188 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (97 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Michael Jackson, the Man Behind the Mask by : Bob Jones

Download or read book Michael Jackson, the Man Behind the Mask written by Bob Jones and published by Select Books Inc.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A former public relations consultant for Michael Jackson describes the singer's life and music career.

Jimi Hendrix and the Cultural Politics of Popular Music

Author : Aaron Lefkovitz
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319770136
Total Pages : 158 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (197 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Jimi Hendrix and the Cultural Politics of Popular Music by : Aaron Lefkovitz

Download or read book Jimi Hendrix and the Cultural Politics of Popular Music written by Aaron Lefkovitz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-28 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, on Jimi Hendrix’s life, times, visual-cultural prominence, and popular music, with a particular emphasis on Hendrix’s relationships to the cultural politics of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and nation. Hendrix, an itinerant “Gypsy” and “Voodoo child” whose racialized “freak” visual image continues to internationally circulate, exploited the exoticism of his race, gender, and sexuality and Gypsy and Voodoo transnational political cultures and religion. Aaron E. Lefkovitz argues that Hendrix can be located in a legacy of black-transnational popular musicians, from Chuck Berry to the hip hop duo Outkast, confirming while subverting established white supremacist and hetero-normative codes and conventions. Focusing on Hendrix’s transnational biography and centrality to US and international visual cultural and popular music histories, this book links Hendrix to traditions of blackface minstrelsy, international freak show spectacles, black popular music’s global circulation, and visual-cultural racial, gender, and sexual stereotypes, while noting Hendrix’s place in 1960s countercultural, US-exceptionalist, cultural Cold War, and rock histories.

Transnational Cinematic and Popular Music Icons

Author : Aaron Lefkovitz
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498555764
Total Pages : 146 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Transnational Cinematic and Popular Music Icons by : Aaron Lefkovitz

Download or read book Transnational Cinematic and Popular Music Icons written by Aaron Lefkovitz and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the films and popular music of Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, and Queen Latifah,connecting each performer to female black-transnational histories and nonwhite female performers’ representational struggles.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Contemporary American Poetry

Author : Craig Svonkin
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350062510
Total Pages : 549 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Bloomsbury Handbook of Contemporary American Poetry by : Craig Svonkin

Download or read book The Bloomsbury Handbook of Contemporary American Poetry written by Craig Svonkin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-01-12 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With chapters written by leading scholars such as Steven Gould Axelrod, Cary Nelson, and Marjorie Perloff, this comprehensive Handbook explores the full range and diversity of poetry and criticism in 21st-century America. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Contemporary American Poetry covers such topics as: · Major histories and genealogies of post-war poetry – from the language poets and the Black Arts Movement to New York school and the Beats · Poetry, identity and community – from African American, Chicana/o and Native American poetry to Queer verse and the poetics of disability · Key genres and forms – including digital, visual, documentary and children's poetry · Central critical themes – economics, publishing, popular culture, ecopoetics, translation and biography The book also includes an interview section in which major contemporary poets such as Rae Armantrout, and Claudia Rankine reflect on the craft and value of poetry today.

Raising Cain

Author : W. T. Lhamon
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674747111
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (471 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Raising Cain by : W. T. Lhamon

Download or read book Raising Cain written by W. T. Lhamon and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cain made the first blackface turn, blackface minstrels liked to say of the first man forced to wander the world acting out his low place in life. It wasn't the "approved" reading, but then, blackface wasn't the "approved" culture either--yet somehow we're still dancing to its renegade tune. The story of an insubordinate, rebellious, truly popular culture stretching from Jim Crow to hip hop is told for the first time in Raising Cain, a provocative look at how the outcasts of official culture have made their own place in the world. Unearthing a wealth of long-buried plays and songs, rethinking materials often deemed too troubling or lowly to handle, and overturning cherished ideas about classics from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Benito Cereno to The Jazz Singer, W. T. Lhamon Jr. sets out a startlingly original history of blackface as a cultural ritual that, for all its racist elements, was ultimately liberating. He shows that early blackface, dating back to the 1830s, put forward an interpretation of blackness as that which endured a commonly felt scorn and often outwitted it. To follow the subsequent turns taken by the many forms of blackface is to pursue the way modern social shifts produce and disperse culture. Raising Cain follows these forms as they prolong and adapt folk performance and popular rites for industrial commerce, then project themselves into the rougher modes of postmodern life through such heirs of blackface as stand-up comedy, rock 'n' roll, talk TV, and hip hop. Formally raising Cain in its myriad variants, blackface appears here as a racial project more radical even than abolitionism. Lhamon's account of its provenance and persistence is a major reinterpretation of American culture.