Full Description
This book approaches Lin-Manuel Miranda's groundbreaking cultural production of Hamilton: An American Musical as a rhetorical text with implications for contemporary U.S. politics. The contributors to this volume utilize training in rhetorical criticism and performance studies to analyze the musical in relation to three broad themes: national public memory, social and cultural identity, and democracy and social change. Each chapter offers unique insights on its own accord while the volume as a whole explores multiple facets of the musical, from the theater performance and the soundtrack to the musical's circulation in public discourse and the Chicago exhibition. The diversity of topics and methods means that the volume is suitable for students of rhetoric and U.S. politics and even the "HamilFans" will learn something new.
Contents
Acknowledgments - Sara A. Mehltretter Drury/Jeffrey P. Mehltretter Drury/Henry Egan: Introduction: Hamilton as Cultural and Rhetorical Phenomenon - Jade C. Huell/Lindsay A. Jenkins: The I/Eye of History: Performing Public Memory, Utopia, and Critical Nostalgia in Hamilton - Michaelah Reynolds/Ryan Neville-Shepard: Hamilton and the Entelechy of the American Dream - Sara A. Mehltretter Drury/James Anthony Williams Jr.: Exhibiting Hamilton: History, Memory, and Musical Theater - Christopher Bell: Hamilton as Cosmogonic Myth - John Clyde Russell: Hamilton and Public Memory of the Founding Era: Myth, Humanization, and Comforting Whiteness in "Post-Racial" America - Emily Berg Paup: Patriarchy and Power: A Feminist Critique of Hamilton - Brandon Inabinet: Bondage and Circulation - Jeffrey P. Mehltretter Drury: Political Niceties and Rap in Hamilton - Mark P. Orbe: Diverse Offerings for Understanding U.S. Politics: Analyzing the Invitational Rhetoric of Hamilton and President Barack Obama - Nancy J. Legge: The Rhetorical Significance of Hamilton in Public Protests - Note on Contributors - Index.
