This chapter examines the material trace – a scrapbook – belonging to a once-celebrated Bengali courtesan, Indubala Dasi (1899-1984). Part I, ‘My Name is Indubala!’, introduces Indubala’s life as a singer, actress and performer, and her activism in the domain of sexual labour rights in Calcutta’s red-light district. Part II, ‘Indubala’s Scrapbook’, offers a detailed analysis of the contents of her scrapbook. It reveals how the carefully curated documents within this quiet and intimate archive gives evidence of a dynamic homosocial world. Part III, ‘Lean Worlds, Voracious Bodies’, uses a multi-page party menu from the scrapbook to reflect on Bengali courtesan women’s appetite in colonial India. The concluding section examines amod (pleasure) and alladi (indulgence) – words found in the invitation cards inside the scrapbook – as coalitional strategies, affective states of organised inner-world resistance that Bengali courtesans and sex workers as queered subjects mobilised not just to survive but also to thrive in the world. This exuberance disrupts the trope of the ‘tragic courtesan’, offering an alternative view of Bengali courtesans as women who did not just endure the world but also curated other joyous ways of being in the world.

This chapter maps the prolific appearance of nautch sundaris (beauties) and jans (beloveds) in South Asian popular visual culture in a period of growing anti-colonial nationalism and anti-nautch regulation in India. Visual traces of dancer-actresses are studied alongside established theatre history primary texts to re-presence the overlooked labour of dancing, a fundamental part of innovative and seditious vernacular dramaturgies that inaugurated modern Bengali drama. Part I, ‘The Age of Mechanical Reprodarshan’, narrates the intimacy of the red-light district and the popular printing presses of Kansaripara Art Studio and Chorebagan Art Studio in Calcutta. It argues that actress-dancers proliferated in print in the unique visual participatory space of darshan. Part II, ‘The Sundaris (Beauties)’ traces the many sundaris – real and fictional – appearing in popular visual prints and in Calcutta’s theatres. Part III, ‘The Jans (Beloveds)’ examines nautch on the humble and ubiquitous matchbox label. A reading of the real and fictional beloveds – Khorshed Jan, Pokhraj Jan, Sanichar Jan, Bani Jan and the celebrated Gauhar Jan (1873 –1930) – explores how the circulation of the Jan series on matchboxes brought about a change in modes of patronage and spectatorship for nautch in the subcontinent in the early twentieth century.

This article explores the reception of American popular visual culture in Ireland. The role Irish Americans played in the development of blackface is discussed, highlighting how blackface was used by the Irish to distance themselves from African Americans, thus helping their integration into (white) American society. Reception of blackface in Ireland is also explored. Consideration is then given to various technological visual media, notably large-scale panorama paintings, which offered American scenes of interest to Irish emigrants, and the cinema, which became so pervasive by the Great War that American cinema, especially, had eclipsed all other entertainments. The article then outlines the contributions made to Irish film by reverse migrants, who produced the first realist representations on film of Irish history and culture during 1910–14. The last section focuses on the ideological resistance by Catholics and nationalists alike to American cinema, which was deemed immoral and undermined the Catholic-nationalist project. This led in 1923 to the introduction of the first piece of media legislation in independent Ireland that severely restricted what could be shown in Irish cinemas. Notwithstanding this cultural protectionist measure, American cinema remained hugely popular in Ireland.

The chapter discusses The Hollow Crown, a two-season television series, produced by Sam Mendes and broadcast on BBC2 in 2012 and 2016, placed in the context of earlier adaptations of the history plays. It argues that the series exemplifies a number of the central controversies surrounding contemporary Shakespeare adaptation, including political agendas, screen and stage traditions of acting and textual interpretation, together with the changing awareness of the viewing public of Shakespeare as a (high or pop) cultural phenomenon. The series also illustrates diverse responses to a number of critical debates, from the representation of female, non-English or non-British voices and accents, colour-blind or colour-conscious casting, set against the demands of historical realism expected from the contemporary screen. In this way, it offers a perfect case study for the Shakespearean history play on British television in the twenty-first century.