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Dissertation Information for Susan Gray Davis

NAME:
- Susan Gray Davis

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Folklore and Folklife

SCHOOL:
- University of Pennsylvania (USA) (1983)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: THEATRE OF THE STREETS: PARADES AND CEREMONIES IN PHILADELPHIA, 1800-1850

Abstract: The purpose of this dissertation was to describe the repertoire of parades and ceremonies performed in Philadelphia between 1800 and 1850, and to analyze them as a type of social communication. The inquiry focussed on several key questions: (1) Who were the major producers of displays for street audiences? (2) What were the important, recurring occasions and uses for street performances? (3) What social meanings could these performances contain and be used to express? Research yielded an historical calendar of festivals, holidays, anniversaries and reenactments, as well as examples of demonstrations, strikes and political movements which used parades to broadcast messages and meanings.

The major producers of parades and ceremonies were affluent members of private paramilitary clubs known as volunteer militias. These troops played leading parts in a wide range of displays; their orderly, military marches came to define the city's dominant parade styles over the years studied. Other important street theatrical traditions sprang up in the city. Old methods of folk justice through drama, crowd actions and political parody fed an urban tradition of burlesque parades which could criticize social inequities. In turn, burlesque parades contributed themes of social criticism to Philadelphia's version of Christmas mumming. Another variety of parades represented labor processes and labor relations. Parades and demonstrations by staged by employers, workers, labor unions and voluntary associations represented and commented on a variety of work and neighborhood relations.

This study concludes that parades in early nineteenth-century Philadelphia carried two different, opposed sets of meanings about social relations. These meanings were communicated through parade conventions, the identities and intentions of parade-makers, and the social context of performance. The dominant, respectable parade style was created by volunteer militias and borrowed by voluntary associations and some goups of workers. Parades by poorer workers, strikers, disguised protesters and holiday revelers exemplified a rowdy, anti-respectable style which propertied Philadelphians disapproved and tried to suppress. While the ways in which social relations could be enacted in the street were relatively open and varied, street theatricality was dominated by the political power and resources of the propertied and the conventions of respectability.

MPACT Scores for Susan Gray Davis

A = 0
C = 3
A+C = 3
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2014-07-02 17:51:42

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