Can I read Performing Menken : Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of American Celebrity on EtoBox?

Performing Menken : Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of American Celebrity by Renée M. Sentilles is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Performing Menken : Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of American Celebrity about?

This book was first published in 2003. Performing Menken uses the life experiences of controversial actress and poet Adah Isaacs Menken to examine the culture of the Civil War period. Menken managed to portray herself as both respectable and daring, claiming for herself various (differing) racial and ethnic identities. Playing male roles on stage, she became the reigning femme fatale. Yet she was also known as an intellectual, publishing poetry and essays. She shared friendships with the greatest writers of her time, including Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and Alexandre Dumas, père. Performing Menken also looks at what Menken's choices reveal about her period. It explores the roots of the cult of celebrity that emerged from the crucible of war. While discussing Menken's racial and ethnic claims and her performance of gender and sexuality, Performing Menken focuses on contemporary use of social categories to explain patterns in America's past and considers why such categories appear to remain important.

Who reads Performing Menken : Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of American Celebrity?

Author

Renée M. Sentilles

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (Virtual Publishing)

Published

2003

Language

EN

ISBN

9780521820707

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Performing Arts, Memoir, Sports