Shady Ladies: Sister Acts, Popular Performance, and the Subversion of American Identity

Abstract

"Shady Ladies: Sister Acts, Popular Performance, and the Subversion of American Identity" is a project with two major components. First, it is a historical project based on original archival research conducted at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Hatch-Billops Collection, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. I construct and contextualize the performance histories of African American (the Hyers Sisters and Whitman Sisters) and European American (the Dolly Sisters and Duncan Sisters) sister acts, developing an argument for how these artists created a space for dialogue regarding the social constructions of race, gender, and sexuality through their often antithetical representations of identities in their performances. Second, I develop a theoretically informed comparative analysis of these groups' performance and biographical histories. I articulate how women on both sides of the black/white binary negotiated and challenged social expectations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.