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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

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productions featuring blackface characters that occurred from 1872 to 1939. That these<br />

may be the only fragments <strong>of</strong> a complicated history justify their study. Phenomenology<br />

can help maintain the scholar’s lens within the boundaries <strong>of</strong> the, albeit limited, evidence.<br />

This investigation has limited itself to the essence <strong>of</strong> puppetry for individual<br />

puppeteers and the essence <strong>of</strong> their puppet products as they appear to close reading.<br />

Future research may follow the phenomenological epoche to investigate the relationship<br />

between the essence <strong>of</strong> live minstrelsy, as an overall field rather than the narrower<br />

essence that appears to D’Arc/Bullock, Deaves, or Meader, and the essence <strong>of</strong> minstrel<br />

puppetry. Further investigation may also expand into other categories <strong>of</strong> representation<br />

(such other “ethnic” categories), to determine the extent to which other stereotyped<br />

representation embedded itself in the aesthetics <strong>of</strong> late nineteenth and early twentieth-<br />

century puppetry. Moreover, while the goal here has been to look at puppetry, there are<br />

many forms <strong>of</strong> theatre that have been tangentially referenced but not provided the same<br />

attention (medicine shows, mask performance). In the end, the hope <strong>of</strong> every scholar<br />

who commits to a project is that the resulting manuscript will contribute to an ongoing<br />

conversation. It is clear that there is far more to be said about the relationship <strong>of</strong><br />

blackface to American puppetry than has been, or even could be, fully explored in a<br />

standard dissertation.<br />

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