Abstract as per original application
(English/Chinese): |
In March 1854, as the US Navy’s “Perry Expedition” to Japan anchored in Yokohama waters, White crew members staged a blackface minstrel show for Japanese officials to celebrate their new friendship. A Japanese artist sketched vivid images of the blackface performers and their instruments, which were copied and circulated around Japan. Historians have since used these images and other sources to tell a story of White race-making by the US for Japanese audiences.
How does the history of the US Expedition to Japan change if we focus on the Expedition’s Black sailors instead of the White sailors’ depiction of an imagined “Blackness”? By centering Black musicians and their instruments, this project analyzes how the Perry Expedition brought Black performance to Asia; and suggests that as Black sailors performed in oceans, littorals, and ports across Asia, they helped construct a Black Pacific, connecting a global African diaspora. Moreover, the project argues that Black shipboard performances preceded, transformed, and recast the Expedition’s better-known (White-performed) blackface minstrel shows, which the project resituates as direct appropriations of Black shipboard performance for imperial ends. Thus, while this project will examine how Commodore Matthew Perry instrumentalized performances of Blackness and “Blackness” to create a diplomatic lingua Americana, it will also analyze how Black sailors used many of these same performances to create timespaces of joy, resistance, liberation, and community.
This 36-month GRF will fund 1) Japan research trips to view key documents and art (National Diet Library, Yokohama Archives of History, Meisei University, Sanada Treasure Museum, Ryoma Memorial Museum, Fukuyama Castle Museum), 2) US research trips to consult unpublished diaries and documents (Harvard, Peabody Essex Museum, Yale, Gilder Lehrman Institute, Smithsonian, Library of Congress, Huntington Library), 3) translation assistance for Japanese documents, 4) image/reproduction costs, and 5) conference travel.
By the end of the GRF term, this grant will yield two articles and a draft monograph. I can complete this work in 36 months because this project builds on preliminary research (including two published articles) and participation in a collaborative on the Expedition based in Japan.
1854年3月，當美國海軍 「黑船來航」前往日本並停泊在橫濱水域，白人船員為日本官員上演了一場黑臉滑稽劇，以慶祝他們的新交誼。一位日本藝術家描繪了黑臉滑稽劇表演者及其樂器的生動圖像，這些圖像被複製並在日本各地流傳。自此之後，歷史學家利用這些圖像和其他資料來源為日本觀眾講述美國白人的種族製造的故事。
如果我們聚焦於「黑船來航」 海軍艦隊上的黑人水手，而非白人水手對想像中的「黑人特性」的描繪，美國遠征日本的歷史會有何改變？本專案以黑人音樂家及其樂器為中心，分析黑船來航如何將黑人表演帶到亞洲；並提出當黑人水手在亞洲各大洋、沿海地區和港口表演時，他們促成建構了一個太平洋黑人社群，來連結全球的非洲離散社群。此外，本專案認為，黑人船上表演本身先於在「黑船」 事件中更廣為人知的（白人表演的）黑臉滑稽劇，並進一步改造和重塑「黑船」事件中的黑臉滑稽劇；同時，本專案將白人表演的黑臉滑稽劇重新定位為出於帝國目的而對黑人船上表演的直接挪用。因此，本專案將探討海軍准將馬修·佩里如何利用黑人表演與「黑人特性」來創造美國外交語言，同時也將分析黑人水手如何利用許多相同的表現來創造歡樂、抵抗、解放與社群的各種時空。
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