Book Review: Dueling Grounds: Revolution and Revelation in the Musical Hamilton ed. by Mary Jo Lodge and Paul R. Laird

Featuring important contributions from scholars and professionals of theatre and performance as well as specialists in musicology, history, and economics, Dueling Grounds: Revolution and Revelation in the Musical Hamilton provides a vast variety of disciplinary perspectives on Hamilton and its wide-ranging deployments of liminality. The show itself has garnered a great deal of acclaim for promoting diversity and inspiring historical education, praise certainly not without warrant. However, the editors and contributors of this topical volume do not shy away from the fact that Hamilton leaves some aspects of eighteenth-century American life either obscured or unaddressed, particularly with regard to issues involving people of colour and women. Continue reading

The Death Dance: the Pickwick Club Disaster in Boston, 1925

Investigations would later reveal that the Pickwick was structurally unsound, but in the immediate aftermath of the disaster city officials, the media, and residents speculated over the cause, with many concluding that jazz music and jazz dancing were responsible. Continue reading