Note on the Companion Website ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction. Biting the Invisible Hand 1
1. Performance 33
2. Labor 87
3. Space 135
4. Race 203
Conclusion. The "New" Blackface 267
Notes 307
Bibliography 351
Index 365
Nicholas Sammond is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Babes in Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the Making of the American Child, 1930-60, and the editor of Steel Chair to the Head: Essays on Professional Wrestling, both also published by Duke University Press.
"Nicholas Sammond’s study provides a detailed, thoughtful,
exhaustively researched examination of the process by which the
early animation studios cast about for technical and semiotic
models to inform their new art form and drew upon the complex and
conflicted vocabulary of blackface minstrelsy to do so."
*Journal of American History*
"Birth of an Industry is a welcome addition and valuable
contribution to the ongoing academic discussion of the relationship
of ethnic tensions to the art and business of animation."
*African American Review*
"Sammond's impressive Birth of an Industry condenses and
stretches various links among the evolving art, labor, and business
of early animated film."
*Choice*
"Moving effortlessly among theories of comedy, critical race
theory, performance studies, animation criticism, and both Marxist
and Freudian analyses, Sammond has produced a comprehensive study
of the rise of American animation."
*Studies in American Humor*
"Few authors . . . have proved minstrelsy's connections to early
animation as carefully and convincingly as Nicholas Sammond in his
thoughtful text Birth of an Industry."
*Journal of Southern History*
"Sammond’s work in The Birth of An Industry is notable and
fascinating. . . . By unpacking each component of the production
and representation of minstrel animation, Sammond builds the space
needed for an insightful discussion."
*Journal of Popular Culture*
"Birth of an Industry offers a timely, valuable, and
theoretically distinguished intervention."
*Animation*
"With Birth of an Industry, Nicholas Sammond demonstrates that the
specter of racialized caricature and its attending performative
power dynamics have a longer and more pernicious continuum through
which race, industry, and the nation understood and affected one
another."
*Media Industries*
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