Arguably, any "culture" is just a sum of its representations. Is the very idea of "Americanness" a theatrical construction? Can we really speak of national-not to mention racial, ethnic, sexual, class, or individual-"identity"? How has "America," historically, "performed" itself into being? We will examine American popular entertainments from the 1920s through the 1970s, a period in which "light" amusements mirrored intensive social turbulence over women's rights, sexual freedoms, civil rights, immigration, class struggles, war and peace, and international rights and responsibilities. What are we seeing when we see the individual or identity group publicly represented? To what extent do different group histories and legacies affect our senses of "identity" in the present? Can an viewer or artist from one group effectively and ethically "identify with" or portray another? What happens when one viewer's or artist's multiple gender, racial, etc. "identities" come into conflict? How do different production and performance choices reinforce, counter, or unsettle identity paradigms? Are we "all one," "all different," or something in-between? Topics studied will include: American World's Fair and Expo exhibits; the Woman onstage, including the burlesque, May West, and the beauty pageant; minstrelsy and other mainstream through radical stagings of "Blackness" ; Asian and other "foreign" ethnicities in the circus sideshow and WWII and Cold War comedy; the Jew onstage, including vaudeville, the Marx Brothers, and standup; gender, Latino/a, African-American, Asian, and other ethnicity, as well as economics, war, peace, and nationhood in the Broadway musical (including "South Pacific," "Porgy and Bess," and "West Side Story") and in "stagy" TV variety and comedy (including Milton Berle, Ed Sullivan, "I Love Lucy," and "The Jeffersons.") Format: tutorial. Requirements: short weekly papers, two longer written projects, and a final exam. Prerequisites: one 100-level course in Theatre, English, Comparative Literature, History, or American Studies. Enrollment limit: 20. Preference given to Theatre, English, Comparative Literature and American Studies majors.