Description:
Clothed Villainy examines how racial performance on the early modern stage helped construct and sustain whiteness as a dominant cultural identity. Through interdisciplinary analysis, Jamie Paris reveals how theatrical traditions of "acting white" continue to shape racial politics today, offering a bold critique and vision for a more inclusive future.
Review Quotes:
"Moving fluidly between the present and the early modern past, and between staged drama and "reality," Clothed Villainy draws us inextricably toward an awareness that race is performative and thus that racism is within our power to reinforce or dismantle. --Patricia Akhimie, author of Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference: Race and Conduct in the Early Modern World