Performing the Temple of Liberty

Jenna M. Gibbs is an assistant professor of history at Florida International University.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Political and Cultural Exchange in the British AtlanticPart I: Slave-Trade Abolition: Pageantry, Parody, and the Goddess of Liberty (1790s–1820s)1. Celebrating Columbia, Mother of the White Republic2. Abolitionist Britannia and the Blackface Supplicant Slave3. Spreading Liberty to AfricaPart II: Emancipation and Political Reform: Burlesque, Picaresque, and the Great Experiment (1820s–1830s)4. Black Freedom and Blackface Picaresque: Life in London, Life inPhiladelphia5. Transatlantic Travelers, Slavery, and Charles Mathews's "Black Fun"Part III: Radical Abolitionism, Revolt, and Revolution: Spartacus and the Blackface Minstrel (1830s–1850s)6. Spartacus, Jim Crow, and the Black Jokes of Revolt7. Revolutionary Brotherhood: Black Spartacus, Black Hercules, and theWage SlaveConclusion: Uncle Tom, the Eighteenth-Century Revolutionary Legacy, and Historical MemoryNotesEssay on SourcesIndex

Over the past two decades social and theatre historians have begun retelling the history of American performance culture as a critical element of the country's political evolution. Only recently, however, have they begun interrogating slavery's influence on the popular theatre... Jenna M. Gibbs, in her excellent Performing the Temple of Liberty: Slavery, Theater, and Popular Culture in London and Philadelphia, 1760-1850, adds a major chapter to this history. By linking the two largest cities of the British Atlantic together as part of a theatrical network, Gibbs illustrates how stage performances both reflected and affected the transatlantic debate over abolition. -- Jason Shaffer Civil War Book Review Provides a fresh look at the transatlantic circulation of printed materials, the cultural work these materials performed, and their political and social implications for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debates on slavery and abolition... Performing the Temple of Liberty constitutes an important contribution to the scholarship on print and performance culture in the British Atlantic. William and Mary Quarterly Serves as a valuable contribution to the study of antislavery politics and to the study of Anglo-Atlantic popular culture. Journal of American Ethnic History Gibbs' impressive study provides a fresh look on the transatlantic circulation of printed materials, the cultural work these materials perform, and their political and social implications for eighteenth and nineteenth-century debates on slavery and abolition...Performing the Temple of Liberty undoubtedly constitutes an important contribution to the scholarship on print and performance culture in the British Atlantic. American Studies