Date of Award
2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Humanities
First Advisor
Marks, Susan
Area of Concentration
Religion
Abstract
This thesis approaches the subject of Jewish racial identity in America through the lens of vaudeville performance. By combining the study of race with the study of performance, the distinctions made between white, Anglo-Saxon Americans and Others in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are explored in a multifaceted manner. I argue that said division is inherently visible in the notion of national identity that performers and audiences formed in the presentation of otherness in onstage performance. Vaudeville, specifically, presents simultaneous methods of resistance and receptivity toward the prospering divisions in whiteness. Beginning by contextualizing the shift in perceptions of whiteness that occurred in response to the Second and Third Waves of European immigration in the nineteenth century, I first argue that both internal and external methods of analysis are significant in the exploration of Jewish racial self-identity. Then, I argue that Jewish performers embodied the shift by partaking in American national identity and the racial othering of Jewish immigrants. Additionally, the establishment of Jewish immigrants as a distinctive race informed the performance of Jewish caricature on stage by the performers David Warfield, Joe Welch, and Ben Welch. Finally, I approach the complex nature of race in performance through an exploration of the dualistic identities of the Jewish vaudeville performer Sophie Tucker. Tucker’s career exemplified the simultaneous subversion and furthering of the divisions in whiteness that appeared on vaudeville stages. Her use of blackface aligned with the presentation of otherness that informed American national identity and brought her closer to full whiteness, in some regard. Then, her abandonment of blackface in favor of the comedic and shocking presentation of her Jewishness acknowledged and subverted the racial othering of Jews in America. Ultimately, this thesis shows the variety of ways in which vaudeville in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries existed as a microcosmic representation of the mass of societal racial tension and the methods performers and audiences utilized to manage it.
Recommended Citation
Zelznak, Jude, "PERFORMING THE SHIFT: JEWISH RACIAL IDENTITY IN AMERICAN VAUDEVILLE AND ITS SOCIAL CONTEXT IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY" (2023). Theses & ETDs. 6445.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/6445