Realist Ecstasy: Religion, Race, and Performance in American Literature

Honorable Mention, Barnard Hewitt Award from the American Society for Theater Research

Explores the intersection and history of American literary realism and the performance of spiritual and racial embodiment.

Recovering a series of ecstatic performances in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American realism, Realist Ecstasy travels from camp meetings to Native American ghost dances to storefront church revivals to explore realism’s relationship to spiritual experience. In her appr...