| Contents |
Introduction: Writing, erasing and versioning Hamilton / Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. -- I. "Grow into more of a phenomenon": Hamilton as history and cultural experience. The battle for Hamilton: then and now / Michael A. Genovese -- "Watching the afterbirth of a nation, watching the tension grow": meta-Hamilton and the citizen-artist during two presidencies / Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. -- "This is not a moment, it's a movement": why millennials are "Hamiltrash" / Vicki L. Hoskins -- II. "A bunch of revolutionary manumission abolitionists?" Race and class in Hamilton. Hamilton hype and Hamilton hate: In Dahomey, A Raisin in the Sun, and a genealogy of race in American popular theater / Megan E. Geigner -- Parodying through song: how comic devices in King George III's songs in Hamilton challenge contemporary dispositions about the symbolic value of youth culture / Evi Stamatiou -- "The villain in your history": the complications of color-conscious casting in Hamilton's America / Laura London Waringer -- III. "Who tells your story?" Exclusive inclusivity and whose story gets told. "A woman who has never been satisfied": a feminist critique of Hamilton / Alexa Schreiber -- "Compel him to include female agency in the sequel," or gender construction in Hamilton / Lisa Quoresimo -- "Here comes the general": an examination of the depiction of the African American man as the father of America in Hamilton / Aaron Brown -- IV. "Even though we started at the very same time..." Comparative Hamiltons. "You hear that music in the air?" Consciousness of music in In the Heights and Hamilton / Dan Rubins -- Contextualizing Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights and Hamilton within hip-hop theater history / Priscilla Maria Page -- Race, casting, and politics: a comparative study of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton and Katori Hall's The Mountaintop / Anne Stefani -- "Everybody's got the right to their dreams": the violent pursuit of the American dream in Assassins and Hamilton / Stephanie Lim -- White supremacy and hyper-masculinity: Hamilton, hip-hop and homicide / Alisa C. Roost -- Conclusion: A Hamilton Evolution / Daniel Banks. |
| Abstract |
The volume is a collection of scholarly essays and personal responses that contextualizes Hamilton: An American Musical in various frameworks: hip-hop theatre and history, American history, musicals, contemporary politics, queer theory, feminism, and more. Hamilton is arguably the most important piece of American theatre in 25 years in terms of both national impact and shaping influence on American theatre. It is part of a larger history of American theatre that reframes the United States and shows the nation its face in a manner not before seen but that is resolutely true. With essays from a number of scholars, artists, political scientists, and historians, the book engages with generational differences in response to the play, transformations of the perception of the musical between the Obama and Trump administrations, youth culture, color-conscious casting, feminist critiques, comparisons with black-ish, The Mountaintop, Assassins, and In the Heights, as well as Hamilton's place in hip hop theatre. |
