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America has gone Hamilton crazy. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning musical has spawned sold-out performances, a triple platinum cast album, and a score so catchy that it is being used to teach U.S. history in classrooms across the country. But just how historically accurate is Hamilton ? And how is the show itself making history? Historians on Hamilton  brings together a collection of top scholars to explain the Hamilton phenomenon and explore what it might mean for our understanding of America’s history. The contributors examine what the musical got right, what it got wrong, and why it matters. Does Hamilton ’s hip-hop take on the Founding Fathers misrepresent our nation’s past, or does it offer a bold positive vision for our nation’s future? Can a musical so unabashedly contemporary and deliberately anachronistic still communicate historical truths about American culture and politics? And is Hamilton as revolutionary as its creators and many commentators claim? Perfect for students, teachers, theatre fans, hip-hop heads, and history buffs alike, these short and lively essays examine why Hamilton became an Obama-era sensation and consider its continued relevance in the age of Trump. Whether you are a fan or a skeptic, you will come away from this collection with a new appreciation for the meaning and importance of the Hamilton phenomenon.

Since its Broadway debut, Hamilton: An American Musical has infused itself into the American experience: who shapes it, who owns it, who can rap it best. Lawyers and legal scholars, recognizing the way the musical speaks to some of our most complicated constitutional issues, have embraced Alexander Hamilton as the trendiest historical face in American civics. Hamilton and the Law offers a revealing look into the legal community's response to the musical, which continues to resonate in a country still deeply divided about the reach of the law. A star-powered cast of legal minds-from two former U.S. solicitors general to leading commentators on culture and society-contribute brief and engaging magazine-style articles to this lively book. Intellectual property scholars share their thoughts on Hamilton 's inventive use of other sources, while family law scholars explore domestic violence. Critical race experts consider how Hamilton furthers our understanding of law and race, while authorities on the Second Amendment discuss the language of the Constitution's most contested passage. Legal scholars moonlighting as musicians discuss how the musical lifts history and law out of dusty archives and onto the public stage. This collection of minds, inspired by the phenomenon of the musical and the Constitutional Convention of 1787, urges us to heed Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Founding Fathers and to create something new, daring, and different.

Brings together a collection of top scholars to explain the Hamilton phenomenon and explore what it might mean for our understanding of America's history. The contributors examine what the musical got right, what it got wrong, and why it matters. These short and lively essays examine why Hamilton became an Obama-era sensation and consider its continued relevance in the age of Trump.

The way Hamilton has reflected, fed into and off these efforts does not have to do only with the musical as a “self-contained” work of art—if such a thing ever existed; that is, its inception, design, composition, or presentation. Perhaps most importantly, it correlates with how the work of art has been negotiated in the realm of popular culture and beyond, in international public discourse; that is, its reception, broadly understood. [...]the main premise of this issue of the European Journal of American Studies: how Hamilton has been talked and written about, the remarkable range of response it has attracted within America, and throughout America’s geocultural ambit, signposts attempts at fathoming America’s shifting poetics; in other words, the intricate ensemble of meaning-making tools and procedures by which the functioning of contemporary American culture can be accessed and assessed. Hamilton’s political impact extended to Joe Biden’s inauguration as President, as the poet laureate Amanda Gorman incorporated Hamilton lyrics in her recital; to the pre-recorded performance of Dear Theodosia during a congressional event for the one year anniversary of the January 6th attack on the Capitol; to even Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in the U.K. Evidently, there is a connecting line to be drawn between the political disputes over federal powers dramatized in the musical, Miranda’s message of political optimism, and the polarizing actions that shaped and came to define the political period since 2016.

This dissertation comprises three projects that were designed to investigate the integration of Geneva Gay’s culturally responsive teaching (CRT) approach into high school musical theatre production. First, I completed a review of the literature to examine the challenges associated with multiculturalism in school musical productions and to explore the potential applications and implications of CRT in theatre and choral education that can be applied to musical theatre production. For the second investigation, I undertook a qualitative study to investigate the lived experiences of music and theatre teachers before, during, and after casting high school students with diverse identities in musicals. Themes emerged from interviews with music teachers (n = 5) and theatre teachers (n = 2) including (a) students’ identities and (b) students’ skills. The findings indicated that participants utilized the “identity-conscious casting” approach when making casting decisions. It also uncovered that this emphasis on inclusivity and diversity in the casting process was linked to both prior-to-casting and post-casting processes. The third investigation is a survey study through which I explored how music teachers integrate the CRT approach into their high school musical productions. Analysis of the responses (N = 119) revealed that participants prioritized and integrated cultural awareness, which related to Gay’s CRT principle, within the various stages of their musical theatre productions, encompassing musical selection, materials preparation, and rehearsal processes, despite encountering some challenges. Results from these three projects indicated that participants integrated Gay’s (2002) five key elements to implement CRT into their musical productions, fostering diversity, and inclusivity, as well as enhancing the overall presentation of the musical.

The popularity of Lin-Manuel Miranda's hit musical Hamilton has been unprecedented. Hamilton tells the story of the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, a founding father who, until recently, was often forgotten in American public memory. Miranda's unique musical, which fuses an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century story with contemporary music and text, features actors of various races and genders in order to tell the story of ‘America then’ by and for ‘America now’. Through a close textual analysis of the musical's script, cast recording, and sheet music, Valerie Lynn Schrader uses narrative theory to explore how Hamilton creates public memory of one of the lesserknown US founding fathers. She argues that, through the narrative paradigm, Hamilton creates what narrative theorist Walter Fisher refers to as ‘public moral argument’,1 through which audience members can discern life lessons, or ‘equipment for living’,2 for their own lives. Finally, the article suggests that the rhetorical theory of Burkean identification may play a role in how public memory of Hamilton's story is formed and how audience members learn life lessons from the musical. Valerie Lynn Schrader is Associate Professor of Communications Arts and Sciences at the Schuylkill Campus of the Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on rhetorical messages in theatre works, especially musical theatre productions. She is herself a classically trained lyric soprano/soubrette.

During the first two years of the Hamilton show on Broadway, the #Ham4Ham lottery system provided fans waiting outside the theater with live performances that included the show's original cast. These included Hamilton songs, covers of other musicals, and different performing arts. Seeking to reach a non-traditional theater audience, Marathon Digital, a digital agency specializing in Broadway shows, turned the performances into a viral campaign utilizing social media outlets to create proximity to the fans through content relevant to the audience.

The theatre industry has long dealt with issues of race and representation, but this especially came to a point in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement. Theatre classrooms are not exempt from conversations and complexities surrounding which stories should be told and who should tell them. The character Tiger Lily has a history of causing great harm to the Indigenous community while also being an Indigenous icon in Western culture. Using New Historicism and storyweaving, this dissertation looks at specific versions of the story Peter Pan through time and places them in conversation with their historical context, stories of and by Indigenous people, and anecdotes from the author. This research is intended to continue the discussion of how stories we tell can affect and harm marginalized communities and how theatre teachers might consider those harms moving forward.

Prolific throughout his career as playwright, which spans well over four decades, Carlos Morton draws material for his theatre work from his many travels across continents. Can the label “Latinx” or “ethnic,” as a matter of fact, function as a marketing strategy now that diversity is something of a “trend”? [...]on the one hand, you could say, well that’s marketing and they’re doing it to sell dolls, but at least you have a Black Barbie, or at least you have someone who wins Academy Awards, instead of all-white Oscars. [IMAGE REMOVED.] Do you find that diversity in U.S. theatre has contributed so as to increase its overall quality; that is, the depth and resonance of the plays, their time resistance, their relevance in terms of how they respond to current realities? Because our literature has survived from 1965 on, and even before that. [...]even though the young people call themselves Latinx, and Francisco and I are the Chicano generation, you know, it’s still continuing.

Fast forward to modern times and mainstream hip hop’s current celebrations of wealth and entrepreneurial spirit served as backdrops for President Obama’s own narrative of individual successes. Because Hamilton emerged during the Obama presidency and clashed with the Trump administration, Hamilton has long had a connection to the Obama presidency and its values, although the musical has been lauded by prominent politicians from both sides of the American political aisle. The “$10 founding father” served as America’s first treasury secretary, creating the National Bank and many of America’s financial systems that have persisted. Aaron Burr: Les Miserables protagonist Javert meets Mos Def George Washington: singer-songwriter John Legend meets Lion King leading father Mufasa Hercules Mulligan: rapper Busta Rhymes meets Donald O’Connor (1940s movie star known for Singin in the Rain) Maria Reynolds: singer Jazmine Sullivan meets Carla from Nin (Nelson 55) Hamilton the man and Miranda himself both exhibit characteristics commonly associated with the entrepreneurial hustle concept if not some of the hip hop hustle ethos as well. According to Nelson, when Miranda asked his father on advice about the risky proposition of working full time on In the Heights, the elder Miranda wrote his son a letter telling him that although it made no sense for him to leave his job to pursue writing, he should do it anyway.