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, ... Read more1760-1850, 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 Show Less