Show Town: Theater and Culture in the Pacific Northwest, 1890–1920Spectacular Men: Race, Gender, and Nation on the Early American StageTheaters of the Everyday: Aesthetic Democracy on the American Stage

Abstract

Book Review| March 01 2020 Show Town: Theater and Culture in the Pacific Northwest, 1890–1920Spectacular Men: Race, Gender, and Nation on the Early American StageTheaters of the Everyday: Aesthetic Democracy on the American Stage Show Town: Theater and Culture in the Pacific Northwest, 1890–1920. By George, Holly. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press. 2016. x, 266 pp. Cloth, $29.95; e-book available.Spectacular Men: Race, Gender, and Nation on the Early American Stage. By Chinn, Sarah E.. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. 2017. xi, 249 pp. Cloth, $82.00; e-book available.Theaters of the Everyday: Aesthetic Democracy on the American Stage. By Gallagher-Ross, Jacob. Chicago: Northwestern Univ. Press. 2018. ix, 233 pp. Cloth, $99.95; paper, $34.95; e-book, $34.95. Amy E. Hughes Amy E. Hughes Amy E. Hughes, associate professor of theater and drama at the University of Michigan, received the American Society for Theatre Research’s Barnard Hewitt Award for her first book, Spectacles of Reform: Theater and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America (2012). Her latest book, coedited with Naomi J. Stubbs, is A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century US American Actor (2018). With Scott D. Dexter and Chris Powell, Hughes and Stubbs also created The Harry Watkins Diary: Digital Edition, winner of the 2019 ATHE-ASTR Award for Excellence in Digital Theatre and Performance Scholarship. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Literature (2020) 92 (1): 156–158. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-8056630 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Amy E. Hughes; Show Town: Theater and Culture in the Pacific Northwest, 1890–1920Spectacular Men: Race, Gender, and Nation on the Early American StageTheaters of the Everyday: Aesthetic Democracy on the American Stage. American Literature 1 March 2020; 92 (1): 156–158. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-8056630 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Literature Search Advanced Search At first glance, the only common thread weaving through Holly George’s Show Town: Theater and Culture in the Pacific Northwest, 1890–1920, Sarah E. Chinn’s Spectacular Men: Race, Gender, and Nation on the Early American Stage, and Jacob Gallagher-Ross’s Theaters of the Everyday: Aesthetic Democracy on the American Stage is the premise that theater, drama, and performance archive important information about US history and culture. But a closer look reveals that, despite their differing objectives, methodologies, and source materials, all three books demonstrate that we can better understand the experience of everyday life during a particular historical moment when we incorporate theater into the story. These authors approach this task in distinctive ways—through local history (George), close readings of literature (Chinn), and the comparative analysis of works with similar themes (Gallagher-Ross). But together, these monographs suggest that by examining theater and... Copyright © 2020 by Duke University Press2020 Issue Section: Book Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.