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Ian Smith, associate professor of English, has been awarded a fellowship from the Folger Shakespeare Library to continue his groundbreaking research on “racial cross-dressing,” the portrayal of blacks by white actors in Elizabethan theater.
He will use the grant for further study at the Folger in Washington, D.C., which will result in a book tentatively titled Dressed in Black: Racial Cross-Dressing on the Early Modern Stage.
The scholarly journal Renaissance Drama will soon publish the article “White Skin, Black Masks: Racial Cross-Dressing on the Early Modern Stage,” Smith’s early treatment of such portrayals and the insights they provide into that society. He led a seminar on the topic at last year’s 30th annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America.
Smith is conducting research on the project with EXCEL Scholar Michael McFadden ’04, an English major from Broomall, Pa., focusing on the use of “blackface” by white characters who portray Africans and its implications for conventional readings of many plays of the period. In Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, students collaborate with faculty on research while earning a stipend. Many of the 180 students who participate each year go on to share their research in scholarly journals and/or at conferences.
The first part of the project entails documenting all period plays that involve black characters and address race and related cultural concerns, and to identify which plays have white characters “cross-dressing” as Africans.
“In the absence of Africans to play certain roles, racial impersonation was achieved through the use of prosthetic devices that simulated the black body: soot, wigs, paints, dyes, and black cloth that covered the extremities,” says Smith.
White actors played the roles of black characters due to London demographics and the financial interests of commercial theaters.
“The important point here is one of representation; the English decided what blackness meant and how it was to be produced as a social identity,” Smith says. “Of course, this meant that whiteness was being formulated and produced at the same time, but according to very different assumptions about cultural agency.”
Understanding racial cross-dressing could reveal playwrights’ responses to the racial dynamic of Elizabethan England in superficially race-neutral plays such as Hamlet, says McFadden.
He describes Smith as a valued mentor whose enthusiasm for the project is contagious.
“I’m a big fan of Professor Smith’s approach — he goes straight to primary texts,” he says. “It’s very exciting to feel that you’re seeing things, understanding texts, and finding connections in ways that are not only all your own, but all new. It makes learning an exploration. The freedom to explore in this way is a great boon to my reasoning and analytical skills.”
Racial cross-dressing on the early modern stage reflected the vast cultural, economic, and political changes in England that resulted from expanding cross-cultural contact during the Renaissance, according to Smith. Specifically, the practice corresponded with a history of encounters with Africans that began in 1554 and led to aggressive international trade, competitive piracy, household servitude, black enslavement, and colonialism.
The scholar believes that the blackness of African skin registered social rank within English society in the same way that different styles of clothing did for Caucasians.
“Structurally, the African’s blackness operated at the same level and served the same definitional function as clothing for the Englishman, yet without the comparable possibilities of mobility that fashion allowed in the making and unmaking of social identities,” he notes.
While many theories have sought to define the unique character of the Renaissance, literary critics have begun addressing the role of race only recently, says Smith, and some scholars have opposed such examination. The effect has been to “preserve the racial status quo.”
In addition to a prior Folger Shakespeare Library Fellowship, Smith has received Fulbright, French Government, Clark Memorial Library, and Newberry Library fellowships, as well as the Columbia University President’s Fellowship, the University Prize of University of the West Indies, and Prix Jambec.
His scholarly research on Renaissance studies and drama, as well as postcolonial literature, has appeared in numerous publications, including an article in the recently published Blackwell Companions to Shakespeare: The Tragedies, three entries in the next edition of Encyclopaedia of Post-Colonial Literature, and an article published last year in Callaloo.
He is writing a book titled Barbarian Errors: Race and Rhetoric in Renaissance England, on language and the emergence of an early modern English discourse of race.
Smith made a presentation last fall at Shakespeare and the Barbarians: Inaugural Conference, Centre for Research and Renaissance Studies, University of Surrey, Roehampton, England. He has been an invited speaker at many conferences and forums, including addresses in recent years to Modern Language Association, International Shakespeare Association, Shakespeare Association of America, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Folger Shakespeare Library (including a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar), Columbia University Shakespeare Seminar, University of Delaware, University of California-Santa Cruz, and Lavender Language and Linguistics Conference.
He gave a campus lecture in November as a recipient of Lafayette’s Jones Faculty Lecture Award, which recognizes excellence in teaching and scholarship.
A member of Lafayette’s faculty since 1995, Smith earned a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University; both the Maîtrise de Lettres in Theater Studies and French and the Licence de Lettres in French from the University of Paris; and a bachelor’s degree from the University of West Indies.
Smith has served on a dozen Lafayette committees, including current terms on the Diversity, Student Life, and New Majors committees.