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Rhae Lynn Barnes is a distinguished historian and cultural analyst best known as the world’s leading expert on the history of amateur blackface minstrelsy. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor of American Cultural History at Princeton University and the Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University.

Dr. Barnes’s forthcoming book, the landmark Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment (W.W. Norton/Liveright, March 2026), is the definitive excavation of America’s most complex and enduring cultural tradition. Based on the unstudied bibliographic history of nearly ten thousand published minstrel show plays, Darkology provides the first comprehensive analysis of how the tradition—and its resulting legacy—was interwoven into the fabric of American identity, politics, and media. Critically, the book uncovers the essential, unstudied role of the United States government in accelerating, funding, and disseminating amateur blackface shows globally, from Elks Clubs and universities to U.S. military bases abroad and World War II Japanese American concentration camps. Dr. Barnes provides unflinching analysis on histories of racism, white supremacy, and cultural representation, offering rigorous focus on American music, film, TV, dance, and theater history, with particular emphasis on New York City and the American West.

A powerful and sought-after voice in contemporary cultural discourse, Dr. Barnes is a celebrated public speaker, multimedia consultant, and fierce advocate for democratizing history. She translates cutting-edge research into clear, elegant commentary that educates and challenges audiences. She has served as a senior consultant for Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the four-part PBS documentary series Reconstruction: America after the Civil War. Born a fourth-generation Anaheim and Santa Ana native, she developed a cultural imagination growing up blocks from Disneyland in a white Teamster household, which ignited a lifelong fascination with Americana, historical myths, and artistic production. A proud product of California’s public school system, she earned her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley (where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Berkeley Poetry Review) and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. She is also the co-founder and editor of U.S. History Scene, an open-access teaching resource whose content has been utilized by The New York Times, The Atlantic, PBS, and cited in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Recent Publications

Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment (W.W. Norton & Company/ Liveright, 2026) maps the political, economic, and cultural geography of amateur blackface minstrel shows by laying bare its unstudied bibliographic history. Marketed nationally as local entertainment, the nearly ten thousand published minstrel show plays—the bedrock of this project—are material remnants of white supremacy’s intellectual and cultural life between the Civil War and Civil Rights. This prolific and censored archive reveals the crucial role the United States government played in accelerating, funding, and disseminating blackface minstrel shows in amateur form worldwide. The project has received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Library of Congress, the Council on Library Information Resources, the Western History Association, the Society for American Music, the Harry Ransom Center, the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, and the Bibliographical Society of America. An interactive website will be released as a companion to the book.

For a preview of Darkology, please consult:

• Rhae Lynn Barnes, “Yes, Politicians Wore Blackface. It Used to be All-American ‘Fun’: Minstrel Shows Were Once So Mainstream That Even Presidents Watched Them.” The Washington Post, February 8, 2019.
• Rhae Lynn Barnes Interviewed by Amy Goodman, “Historian: Americans Must Face Violent History of Blackface Amid Virginia Gov. Racist Photo Scandal” on Democracy Now! February 4, 2019. 14 minutes on live television; syndicated nationally on public radio.
• Rhae Lynn Barnes Interviewed by Nathan Connolly (Host), “The Faces of Racism: A History of Blackface and Minstrelsy in American Culture” for Back Story Radio, February 8, 2019. 35 minutes for national and online radio programming.

American Contact: Intercultural Encounter and the Boundaries of Book History Co-Authored/Co-Edited with Glenda Goodman (Assoc. Professor of Music, UPENN) with the Material Text Series at the University of Pennsylvania Press.  

Roe v. Wade: Fifty Years After Co-Authored/Co-Edited with Catherine Clinton (Emerita Queen’s University Belfast & Professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio) with the History in the Headlines Series at the University of Georgia Press. 

Notating Empire: Printed Music and the Frontiers of Knowledge 

Co-Authored with Glenda Goodman. Book in progress. 

American Music History 

Rhae Lynn Barnes and Glenda Goodman, Co-Authors, “Finding the ‘Frontier’ in a Page of Music: Imperial Evidence and the Legacy of Settler Colonialism,” American Music Issue 40 Volume 4. 

Rhae Lynn Barnes and Glenda Goodman, Co-Authors, “American Music and Racial Fantasy, Past and Present,” and Co-Editors, Colloquy “Early American Music and the Construction of Race,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, the University of California Press. Published Fall 2021 Issue 74, Volume 3.

Media Coverage

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/2/4/historian_americans_must_face_violent_history

Social Media

Country Focus

United States

Expertise by Geography

United States

Expertise by Chronology

18th century, 19th century, 20th century, 21st century

Expertise by Topic

American Civil War, American Presidents, Book History, Family, Gender, Genocide, Human Rights, Material Culture, Military, Pedagogy, Public History, Race, Sexuality, Slavery, Sports, Technology, Urban History, Women, World War II