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Events
Mar. 1 | 2012 Franklin Prize
Nominations for 2012 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize for the best-published book in American Studies due
Mar. 1 | 2012 Romero Prize
Nominations for 2012 Lora Romero Publication Prize for the best-published first book in American Studies due
Mar. 1 | Community Partnership Grants
Applications for the 2012 Community Partnership Grants Program to assist American Studies collaborative, interdisciplinary community projects due
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Wittmann, Matthew. "Empire of Culture: U.S. Entertainers and the Making of the Pacific Circuit, 1850-1890," Program in American Culture, University of Michigan, May 2010. Advisor: James Cook
During the mid-nineteenth century, the ongoing development of a robust and expansive U.S. culture industry dovetailed with the emergence of a recognizable Pacific world shaped by the integrative forces of colonialism and capitalism. In the wake of the California Gold Rush, these seemingly disparate developments intersected as U.S. entertainers flocked to San Francisco and began to tour around the Pacific, giving birth to a vibrant entertainment circuit that fomented interactions and mediated exchanges between the United States and the diverse peoples and cultures of the Pacific world. This dissertation is a transnational cultural history of this Pacific circuit that focuses on the experiences of the U.S. entertainers that moved through it and their reciprocal interactions people and places that they encountered along the way.
While the Pacific circuit generated a range of responses and served a variety of ends, within its capacious framework I seek to develop three broad and related themes. The first centers on the workings and transnational trajectory of the U.S. culture industry, which ensured that U.S. entertainers assumed a prominent and profitable position on the developing circuit. The second theme looks at how the performances of U.S. entertainers in transnational contexts were dynamic interactions imbued with cross-cultural meaning and long-term impacts. Lastly, the dissertation explores the complex relationship between the evolving Pacific circuit and an expanding U.S. empire.
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