%0 PDF %T Melinda and Her Sisters: Reconsidering a Suffrage Operetta as Pageantry %A Winter, Kendall. %D 2018-03-16T09:33:52.457-04:00 %8 2018-03-16 %R http://localhost/files/q811kx07z %X Abstract: This thesis claims that the sui generis classification of Belmont and Maxwell's Melinda and Her Sisters as a suffrage operetta is to blame for the lack of extant scholarship on the work. In its place, I offer the analytical framework of pageantry. Relying on contemporaneous press and practical guides and recent histories of each genre, I reconstruct the commercial and critical atmosphere in the year the work was created, 1916. I also draw on suffrage propaganda, government documents, and court cases to convey the sociopolitical tension of the historical moment. By placing the two genres in dialogue, I reveal a chiasmus of gender and class coding attendant to each. I conclude that it was the relatively high cultural capital of "suffrage operetta," and not its aptness of description, that ultimately led the creators to market their work as such. As a genre case study, this thesis comments on the impact that ontology has on reception.; Thesis (M.A.)--Tufts University, 2018.; Submitted to the Dept. of Music.; Advisor: Stephan Pennington.; Committee: Melinda Latour, and Barbara Wallace-Grossman.; Keywords: Music, and Theater history. %[ 2022-10-13 %9 Text %~ Tufts Digital Library %W Institution