Through extended readings of the works of P. T. Barnum, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, and Fanny Fern, Bonnie Carr O’Neill shows how c

Focusing on representations of women's literary celebrity in nineteenth-century biographies, autobiographical accounts, periodicals, and fiction, Brenda R. Webe

Peter P. Reed reveals how nineteenth-century American theatre and performance reckoned with Haiti's courageous enactments of Black freedom.

Since long before the age of celebrity activism, literary authors have used their public profiles and cultural capital to draw attention to a wide range of soci

Well before television and the internet, there were women who sought fame, flirted with infamy, and actively engaged with their fan base. In today's pop culture