Race in American Musical Theater

Josephine Lee is Professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota, USA, and the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture. Her other books include The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado and Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage.

• Introduction - American Musical Theater and Its Discontents Chapter 1 - Racial Stereotypes, Major to Minor Chapter 2 - Beyond the Great White Way: Racial Progress and Black Musical Theater Chapter 3 - We Could Make Believe: Liberal Limitations and the American Musical Chapter 4 - Dance Ten, Looks Three: The Chorus Line and the Color Line Chapter 5 - Who Tells Your Story? Race, Immigration, and the American Dream

Highlights the ways in which the genre has variously reflected, explored, combated, and even exacerbated the processes and effects of marginalization ... Highly useful in courses designed to examine the sociopolitical dimensions of musical theatre and to those performing dramaturgical work on specific musicals dealing with race … Well-rounded and informative. [The volume] will spur the beginning or intermediate musical theatre student or aficionado, or theatre practitioner, to deeper exploration and, perhaps, to new understanding.