Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Performing Arts
Episode: Sara E. Lampert, "Starring Women: Celebrity, Patriarchy, and American Theater, 1790-1851" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
Description: Women performers played a vital role in the development of American and transatlantic entertainment, celebrity culture, and gender ideology. In Starring Women: Celebrity, Patriarchy, and American Theater, 1790-1851 (U Illinois Press, 2020), Sara E. Lampert examines the lives, careers, and fame of overlooked figures from Europe and the United States whose work in melodrama, ballet, and other stage shows shocked and excited early U.S. audiences. These women lived and performed the tensions and contradictions of nineteenth-century gender roles, sparking debates about women's place in public life. Yet even their unprecedented wealth and prominence failed to break the patriarchal family stru...