Broadway Modern: Race, Gender, Class, and the American Musical

Catalog description

What is musical theatre? What makes the Broadway musical quintessentially "American"? And what do these brightly colored, mesmerizing, beguiling spectacles reveal about the troublesome workings of race and class, gender and sex, nation and world? Searching for answers to these and other questions, students in this course will survey, critique, and theorize the complicated, strange, and often disturbing history of the genre, from its 19th century roots in minstrel performances, Shakespeare, and European opera, through the heyday of the mid-20th century, and, finally, right up to to the current, provocative productions of "Hamilton" and "Shuffle Along."