Acts of Conspicuous Compassion: Performance Culture and American Charity Practices

Notes

167 NoteS introduction 1. Barefoot Contessa, http://www.barefootcontessa.com/about/aspx. Accessed 4/15/11. 2. Marikar,“Barefoot Contessa Reaches Out.” 3. Pereda, “March 2011 Update Part 1 & 2,” Angels for Enzo, http://www.angels forenzo.com/march2011update2.htm. Accessed 4/15/11. 4. Angelo,“Time for Some Damage Control.” 5. Comments are taken from responses on Pop Eater, http://www.popeater .com/2011/03/31/ina-garten-make-a-wish/,and Business Insider, http://www.business insider.com/food-network-ina-garten-barefoot-contessa-make-wish-2011-3. Accessed 4/15/11. 6. Marikar,“Barefoot Contessa Reaches Out.” 7. Martin, Virtuous Giving, 14. 8. “Giving Statistics,” Charity Navigator, “Giving Statistics,” http://www.charity navigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=42. Accessed 9/15/11. 9. For a more comprehensive discussion of CRM and its rise in American social and business practices,see Adkins,Cause Related Marketing; and W.Smith and Higgins, “Cause-Related Marketing.” 10. Mitchell and Snyder, Cultural Locations of Disability, 3. 11. Berlant, Compassion, 5. 12. Davidson, Concerto for the Left Hand, 4. 13. Garland-Thomson, Staring, location 34–39. 14. L. J. Davis, Bending Over Backwards, 26–29. 15. Siebers, Disability Theory, 3. 16. Ibid., 16. 17. Ibid., 22–23. 18. Ibid., 25. 19. Stanley, From Bondage to Contract, 103. 20. “New York’s Holiday Beggar and His‘Graft,’” New York Times, Dec. 25, 1904. 21. See Schechner, Between Theatre and Anthropology. Theater historian Marvin 168 NoteS to PaGeS 12–21 Carlson provides a concise overview of the various disciplines intersecting with and contributing to the development of performance studies in his work Performance. 22. This is an admittedly necessarily reductive gloss on the concept of performativity . For a more comprehensive discussion of the idea and its iteration in contemporary scholarship,see Judith Butler,Gender Trouble; Judith Butler,Excitable Speech; Parker and Sedgwick, Performativity and Performance; and Luxley, Performativity. 23. Madison and Hamera, Sage Handbook of Performance Studies, xii. 24. T. C. Davis,“Theatricality: An Introduction,” 33. chApter 1 1. Nineteenth-century attitudes about Deaf individuals equated their disability with muteness as well, conflating the two in contemporary parlance as “deaf/dumb.” Historians of Deaf culture such as Harlan Lane, Douglas Baynton, Bernard Muttez, and John Van Cleve, among others, devote attention in their scholarship to the historical and political significance of this conjunction. I follow the nineteenth-century trend of demarcating Deaf people as“deaf/dumb” in order to maintain a sense of cultural fidelity to this time period. 2. Gallaudet,“Sermon Delivered at the Opening,” 35. 3. McCarthy, American Creed, 49–50. 4. For a detailed discussion of these early reform efforts such as the establishment of the American Bible Tract Society, see McCarthy, American Creed, chap. 3,“The Legacy of Disestablishment.” For more on the Second Great Awakening, see Griffin, Their Brothers’ Keepers. 5. McCarthy, American Creed, 52. 6. Bakal, Charity USA, 23. 7. Qtd. in Bremner, American Philanthropy, 12. 8. McCarthy, American Creed, 16. This attitude characterized and continues to characterize charity as an instrument that ideally provides some level of relief but also institutes preventative measures so that problems such as poverty, illness, alcoholism, gambling, or other immoral practices are brokered at the source. 9. Many feminist and historical scholars have published widely on the involvement of women in nineteenth-century charity movements. For more on the work of female charity reformers in antebellum America, see Ginzberg, Women in Antebellum Reform; Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence; Stansell, City of Women; N. A. Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change; Scott, Natural Allies; and McCarthy, Lady Bountiful Revisited. While I do not engage specifically with this phenomenon, I acknowledge and take into consideration the feminization of charity’s affective components, as well as the gendered implications of the charity plea. 10. Qtd. in McCarthy, American Creed, 19. 11. Ibid., 33. NoteS to PaGeS 21–33 169 12. Wagner, What’s Love Got to Do With It? 54. 13. “Seeker of Happiness,” 2. 14. Klages, Woeful Affliction, 17. 15. Todd, Sensibility, 8. 16. Ibid., 25. 17. R. H. Brown, Sentimental Novel in America, 176. 18. Ibid., 176. 19. Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women, 57. 20. Ginzberg, Women in Antebellum Reform, 19. 21. Both Stansell and Ginzberg give ample consideration to the way women achieved a level of respectability through their charitable efforts. See Ginzberg’s Women and the Work of Benevolence, Ginzberg’s Women in Antebellum Reform, and...