Between Mountains and Manuscripts: A Conversation with Angelina Del Balzo

Keep Stirring the Sauce Podcast
May 12, 20205

Join us for a fascinating conversation with Dr. Angelina Del Balzo, an Assistant Professor of English at Utah Valley University, as we explore her academic journey, passion for 18th-century British literature, and her unique cultural perspective as an Italian American. From her studies in Gender and Imperialism to her project on the Ottoman Empire in theater, Angelina shares her deep insights into drama, adaptation theory and the intersection of history, gender and race. We also discuss her diverse personal experiences, from her time teaching at Bilkent University in Turkey to her love for hiking in Utah Mountains and exploring the world through travel. Whether you're e interested in academia culture, or simply love a good conversation, this episode has something for everyone.

“Eighteenth-Century Tragedy and the Formation of Whiteness”

Open Digital Seminar for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ODSECS) [online]
15 July 2021 at 4pm (UK)

One of the darkest legacies of the Enlightenment is the development of modern race categories while the transatlantic slave trade was at its height. As this focus on race formation has become central to research and teaching in the period, texts such as Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688) have taken a more prominent place in scholarship and in the curriculum than ever before. In the eighteenth century itself, however, it was not Behn’s novella but Thomas Southerne’s 1696 stage adaptation that was more widely known; the stage Oroonoko and its adaptation by John Hawkesworth (1759) remained one of the most popular productions well into the nineteenth century. Sourtherne’s most famous change remained in the various revivals and adaptations of his Oroonoko throughout the following century and a half: Imoinda, the enslaved African princess and wife to Oroonoko, becomes a white woman, the daughter of a European who joined the Coramantien court. Given the play’s eventual importance to the history of abolition, Imoinda’s change in race is striking, as Southerne rejects the opportunity for the representation of an enslaved Black woman on stage. The theatrical Imoinda stands as is a well-documented historical impossibility: a white woman enslaved under chattel slavery as practiced in the Americas. But while Oroonoko’s depiction of the contemporary plantation is singular, its formal structure is actually characteristic of tragedy of the period. This talk argues that the generic conventions and dramatic expectations of the Oriental she-tragedy, a popular genre at the time, make this representation of the white Imoinda imaginatively viable, and that the visual dissonance of her character highlights the ongoing and contradictory development of modern race thought in the long eighteenth century.