Timeline, Conflict, and Jubilee Singers in Canada and the Blackface Atlantic
Sponsored by Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Recorded on 04/14/2025
Posted in The Authority File
Episode 421
In the second episode of this four-part series, Dr. Cheryl Thompson, Associate Professor in Performance at Toronto Metropolitan University, digs into the timeline and conflict of her book, Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict, and Freedom, 1812-1897. First, she discusses the difficulty in choosing a starting point for the title. Aiming to include the theater’s rich history, she elected to begin at the War of 1812—one of the defining moments of Canada and its burgeoning identity—and intersperse the theater’s techniques and history throughout the book. Additionally, as Cheryl explains, the War of 1812 revealed Canada’s varying viewpoints, with factions of Loyalists versus pro-America/Republic groups, and, later during the US Civil War, Unionists versus Confederates.
In fact, Cheryl points out that diverging audiences continued past 1865 as all-Black minstrel groups and Jubilee singers, often formerly enslaved, began to tour Canada, leading to a split of working-class crowds at minstrel shows and upper class viewers for Jubilee performances. Cheryl explores the competing narratives of these two shows, their popularity in Canada, and the intersection of conflict and entertainment in this fascinating episode.
About the guest:
Dr. Cheryl Thompson
Associate Professor in Performance
Toronto Metropolitan University
Dr. Cheryl Thompson is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Black Expressive Culture and Creativity and an Associate Professor in Performance at Toronto Metropolitan University. Dr. Thompson is Director, Research and Creative Strategy of Mapping Ontario’s Black Archives (MOBA), an Ontario Early Researcher Award, and Social Science Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funded project. MOBA is reimagining Black archives in Ontario by making Black archival collections accessible and searchable via an open access online platform. She is also director of Black Creative Lab, an incubator for the curation of public exhibits, speaker events, and YouTube content.
She is the author of Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty (2021) and Beauty in a Box (2019). Her next book, Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict, and Freedom, 1812-1897, will be published in April 2025. In 2021, Dr. Thompson was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists for her contributions to Black Canadian studies.
Enjoy the conversation? Listen to the rest of the series:
- Talking Infrastructure, Education, and Canada and the Blackface Atlantic
- Gender, Race, and the Archives of 19th-Century Minstrelsy and Vaudeville
- Mapping Ontario’s Black Archives and Canada as Part of the Atlantic World
Check out our previous series with Wilfrid Laurier University Press:
– Podcasting in Academia
– Exploring Ecologies in Practice and Environmental Humanities
– Outlining the “Big, Big Tent” of Comics Studies
– The Contemporary Leonard Cohen
– Creative Disruption in Scholarship
Missed an episode? We’ve got you covered:
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Choice Podcast Updates!
Check out the Authority File Round-Up on our blog, Open Stacks!
Find the episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Music.
Sponsored by:
