In Skin Acts, Michelle Ann Stephens explores the work of four iconic twentieth-century black male performers—Bert Williams, Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte, and Bob Marley—to reveal how racial and sexual difference is both marked by and experienced in the skin.

Michelle Ann Stephens is Associate Professor of English and Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is the author of Black Empire: The Masculine Global Imaginary of Caribbean Intellectuals in the United States, 1914–1962, also published by Duke University Press.

Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction. Fleshing Out the Act 1
1. Seeing Faces, Hearing Signs 31
2. Bodylines, Borderlines, Color Lines 71
3. The Problem of Color 111
4. In the Flesh, Living Sound 153
Conclusion. Defacing Race, Rethinking the Skin 191
Notes 205
Bibliography 259
Index 273