Music 171RM - Race in the American Musical

The history of musical theater in the United States is bound up with race on multiple levels: from the problematic legacies of vaudeville and minstrelsy, to erasure, whitewashing, and nontraditional casting, to issues of genre and identity in pop, rock, and hip hop musicals. In this course, we will survey selected musical works in the history of musical theater from the perspective of race, moving from Hamilton to Show Boat, Porgy and Bess, South Pacific, West Side Story, and Rent, and others. Our guiding question will be: what is musical about race in the musical? How does the spectacle of the singing body, the longevity of the catchy show tune, and new modes of consumption and fandom via the web and social media affect the way Broadway's creators and audiences negotiate power, inequality, and representation?

This course is limited to first-years and sophomores.