The following is a guest blog post by Josephine Lee, author of Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater, available for pre-order and on sale September 2022. Oriental, Black, and White focuses on how nineteenth and early twentieth century American theater featured Chinese, Indian, and other “oriental” characters played by both Black and white actors. These stock roles complicated the racial dynamics of stage performance beyond the more common types of blackface minstrelsy. My book emphasizes how various stereotypes functioned to associate racialized bodies with states of servitude, as familiar portrayals of...