Library Catalog

Semi-Civilized : The Moro Village at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition /

Hawkins, Michael C.

Semi-Civilized : The Moro Village at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition / Michael C. Hawkins. - 1 online resource (156 p.) : 9 b&w halftones - NIU Southeast Asian Series .

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Complicated and Collaborative Art of Colonial Display -- 1. Sensational Savages -- 2. Nostalgia and the Familiar Savage -- 3. Measuring Moros -- Conclusion: The Paradox of Preservation and Performative Extinction -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

restricted access http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Semi-Civilized offers a concise, revealing, and analytically insightful view of a critical period in Philippine history. Michael C. Hawkins examines Moro (Filipino Muslim) contributions to the Philippine Exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, providing insight into this fascinating and previously overlooked historical episode.By reviving and contextualizing Moro participation in the Exposition, Hawkins challenges typical manifestations of empire drawn from the fair and delivers a nuanced and textured vision of the nature of American imperial discourse. In Semi-Civilized Hawkins argues that the Moro display provided a distinctive liminal space in the dialectical relationship between civilization and savagery at the fair. The Moros offered a transcultural bridge. They, through their official yet nondescript designation as "semi-civilized," undermined and mediated the various binaries structuring the Exposition. Hawkins demonstrates, represented an unexpectedly welcomed challenge to the binary logic and discomfort of the display.As Semi-Civilized shows, the display was collaborative and the Moros exercised unexpected agency, by negotiating, how the display was both structured and interpreted by the public. Fair-goers were actively seeking an extraordinary experience. Exhibit organizers framed it, but ultimately the Moros provided it. And therein lay a tremendous amount of power.


Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.


In English.

9781501748226 9781501748233

10.1515/9781501748233 doi

2019026550


Ethnology--Exhibitions--History--Philippines--20th century.
Human zoos--History--Missouri--Saint Louis--20th century.
Imperialism in popular culture--History--Missouri--Saint Louis--20th century.
Muslims--Exhibitions--History--Philippines--20th century.
Midwest.
U.S. History.
HISTORY / Asia / General.

Moros, Empire, Exposition, Philippines, colonial studies, American empire.

DS666.M8

305.6/970977866074