This is your afterlife: gender,slavery, and televisual subjection |
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Authors: | Sarah Haley |
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Affiliation: | 1. Department of Gender Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.shaley@ucla.edu |
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Abstract: | In 1957 Arries Ann Ward, who was formerly enslaved, appeared on the classic television interview-entertainment program, This Is Your Life. Despite Ward’s practices of refusal, the rare interview enacts an idealization of black female servitude and indebted obligation through performances of affection and racial benevolence. Ward’s appearance effectively works to resolve national crisis produced by widespread images of civil-rights protest and counterinsurgent violence, reifying discourses of American exceptionalism in Cold War context. |
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Keywords: | gender race slavery television Civil Rights Black women performance |
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