Dr. Kellen Hoxworth Publishes New Book on History of Racialized Performance in the Anglophone Imperial World

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Kellen Hoxworth, PhD, on the publication of his most recent book Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance.

Per Northwestern University Press, the book is “a sweeping history of racialized performance across the Anglophone imperial world from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century.

“A material history of racialized performance throughout the Anglophone imperial world, Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance revises prevailing understandings of blackface and minstrelsy as distinctively US American cultural practices. Tracing intertwined histories of racialized performance from the mid-eighteenth through the early twentieth century across the United States and the British Empire, this study maps the circulations of blackface repertoires in theatrical spectacles, popular songs, visual materials, comic operas, closet dramas, dance forms, and Shakespearean burlesques.

“Kellen Hoxworth focuses on overlooked performance histories, such as the early blackface minstrelsy of T. D. Rice’s ‘Jump Jim Crow’ and the widely staged blackface burlesque versions of Othello, as traces of the racial and sexual anxieties of empire. From the nascent theatrical cultures of Australia, Britain, Canada, India, Jamaica, South Africa, and the United States, Transoceanic Blackface offers critical insight into the ways racialized performance animated the imperial ‘common sense’ of white supremacy on a global scale.” 

“Kellen Hoxworth’s Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance is poised to become a cornerstone study of blackface minstrelsy, racial impersonation, and the provenance of global popular cultures. This methodologically deft and theoretically ambitious book is cultural studies at its finest.” —Douglas A. Jones, Duke University  

“This is an astonishing and important piece of work by a scholar who has been engaged in deep study of racialization.” —Maurya Wickstrom, CUNY Graduate Center

​“This timely and relevant study’s ambitious agenda to broaden how we view the roots, routes, and futures of blackface minstrelsy is firmly grounded in but unrestrained by previous minstrel scholarship.” —Marvin McAllister, Winthrop University

Kellen Hoxworth (he/they) is Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York. His academic interests focus on the intersections between performance, race, and coloniality, particularly in African and Black diasporic performance.