Introduction: History Is Happening in Manhattan

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Introduction: History Is Happening in Manhattan 1
4. Act I. The Script
5. 1. From Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton to Hamilton: An American Musical 17
6. 2. “ Can We Get Back to Politics? Please?”: Hamilton’s Missing Politics in Hamilton 42
7. 3. Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Hamilton 58
8. 4. The Greatest City in the World?: Slavery in New York in the Age of Hamilton 71
9. 5. “ Remember . . . I’m Your Man”: Masculinity, Marriage, and Gender in Hamilton 94
10. Act II. The Stage
11. 6. “ The Ten-Dollar Founding Father”: Hamilton, Money, and Federal Power 119
12. 7. Hamilton as Founders Chic: A Neo-Federalist, Antislavery, Usable Past? 137
13. 8. Hamilton and the American Revolution on Stage and Screen 167
14. 9. From The Black Crook to Hamilton: A Brief History of Hot Tickets on Broadway 187
15. 10. Looking at Hamilton from Inside the Broadway Bubble 222
16. Act III. The Audience
17. 11. Mind the Gap: Teaching Hamilton 249
18. 12. Reckoning with America’s Racial Past, Present, and Future in Hamilton 260
19. 13. Who Tells Your Story?: Hamilton as a People’s History 277
20. 14. Hamilton: A New American Civic Myth 297
21. 15. “Safe in the Nation We’ve Made”: Staging Hamilton on Social Media 324
22. Appendix: “Hamilton: A Musical Inquiry” Course Syllabus 351
23. Chronology 361
24. Acknowledgments 377
25. Notes on Contributors 381
26. Index 385