Uncle Tom’s Cabin, An American Story? The Hemispheric Repertoires of Antislavery Politics

• In Event: Crossing Politics and Identities in Latin American Performance Histories

Abstract

This paper proposes a transnational approach to the study of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the Americas. In moving away from analyzing the phenomenon in different national contexts (eg., US, Russia, or Brazil), my objective rests in highlighting the processes fostering circulation of ideas, racialization, and citizenship through a focus on theatrical and novelistic adaptations. I will draw from primary research on Brazil, Mexico, and the US, and tap into the secondary literature on Argentina and Peru to flesh out different aspects of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. My concerns range from the more specific debates that this story sparked in different political contexts to the more general ways that the dramatic representations of slavery and black life prescribed ambivalent understandings of blackness.

Author

• Celso Castilho, Vanderbilt University