“Modern Medicine Had to Start Somewhere:” Performing Health and White Privilege in The Knick

Authors

  • Claudia Trotzke University of Regensburg

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.251

Keywords:

White Privilege, Health, Medicine, Performance Studies, Modernity, The Knick

Abstract

This essay examines the interrelations of health and white privilege in the U.S.-American historical and medical drama The Knick “(2014-). Employing a broad definition of health and drawing from performance studies, this article argues that the everyday life within the series depicts a racist society, while the television series itself with its rhetoric of modernity and visual strategies makes white privilege visible in the context of health. The television series and everyday life within the show are examined in regard to their performative dimensions, i.e. both levels of performance do not merely represent, but take an active part in defining health and its surrounding discourses.

 

Author Biography

  • Claudia Trotzke, University of Regensburg
    Claudia Trotzke is an assistant at the American Studies Department at the University of Regensburg. She completed her M.A. at the University of Regensburg with a thesis entitled “‘One of the most expensive zip codes in the world’: The Performance of the Hamptons as a Space of White Privilege in ABC’s Revenge“,“ for which she received the Dr.-Katharina-Sailer-Award. Her research interests include performance studies, visual culture studies, critical whiteness studies, critical race theory, U.S.-American television series, and, more recently, health discourses. Inspired by her academic stays abroad at Wesleyan University (2009-2010) and the University of Kansas (2012) as well as through her work at the American Studies Department in Regensburg she is especially interested in combining performance studies with the field of American Studies. Currently, she is developing her PhD thesis on performances and visualizations of health in U.S.-American culture.

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Published

2016-05-17

Issue

Vol. 17 No. 1 (2016)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.

How to Cite

“‘Modern Medicine Had to Start Somewhere:’ Performing Health and White Privilege in The Knick”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, May 2016, https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.251.

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