[Anthropgrad] WIP SEMINAR -Bernth Lindfors - 11 April

[Jodi Parvey]

Dear All,  Please circulate the attached poster on your email lists. 
Apologies for cross posting. Many thanks Jodi

The Research School of Humanities presents

WORK-IN-PROGRESS SEMINAR
At the Theatrette, Old Canberra House

1-2.30 pm, 11 April

Playing a Moor Playing a Moor: Ira Aldridge and Abolition
Professor Bernth LINDFORS
English and African Literatures, University of Texas at Austin

Ira Aldridge (1807-1867) was the most visible black man in Europe in 
the middle of the nineteenth century. In his forty-two years on stage 
he performed in more than twenty European nations, winning more 
awards, honors, medals and decorations than any other actor of his 
generation. He began his professional career in the British Isles but 
spent his last fifteen years touring the European continent where he 
was hailed as one of the greatest tragedians of all time. He was 
known primarily as a Shakespearean actor but he also starred in 
melodramas about slavery and in farces about black servants. However, 
he did not limit himself to racial roles. To expand his Shakespearean 
repertoire he whitened up to play Richard III, Macbeth, Shylock and 
Lear. He also occasionally performed as a Peruvian general, a Dutch 
sea captain, a Swiss patriot, an Italian Robin Hood, and even the 
monster in a stage adaptation of Frankenstein. His versatility was impressive.

Yet he insisted on stressing his race when publicizing his 
performances. He was always billed as the "African Roscius," an 
honorific title alluding the great Roman actor of tragedy and comedy. 
And early in his career he adopted the ploy of pretending to be the 
son of an exiled Christian Fulani prince from Senegal - in other 
words, a true Moor, someone who could play Othello with ethnic 
authenticity. The fact that he was born and brought up in New York 
City did not necessarily invalidate this claim. Audiences believed 
him to be African and evaluated his performances accordingly. Africa 
thus became his theatrical trademark and a key to his success as well 
as to several of his notable failures.

Aldridge's remarkable career raises a number of questions about 
racial attitudes in the Western world in the mid-nineteenth century, 
an era that saw the abolition of slavery, further exploration and 
expropriation of Africa by Europe, the emergence of ethnography as an 
academic discipline, the spread of Darwinian ideas, and the rise of 
scientific racism. Since he was a highly visible black in a white 
world at a time when the nature of the relationship between whites 
and blacks was being redefined, his life might be expected to yield 
insights into the big racial issues of his day.

Bernth Lindfors, Professor Emeritus of English and African 
Literatures at the University of Texas at Austin, has written and 
edited a number of books on African literatures and black performers, 
among them African Textualities: Texts, Pre-Texts and Contexts of 
African Literature (1997), Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological 
Show Business (1999), Africa Talks Back: Interviews with Anglophone 
African Writers (2002), and Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius (2007). 
He is currently working on a biography of Ira Aldridge.

Convenors: Ken Taylor and Stephen Foster
For general enquiries please contact:
Phone: 61252434
Email: <mailto:administration.rsh at anu.edu.au>administration.rsh at anu.edu.au
Web: http://rsh.anu.edu.au/

All Welcome
Please circulate widely
This lecture is free and open to the public. Parking vouchers are 
available upon request.
ANU COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
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