Róisín Lambert MA

PhD Candidate

University Profile URL: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/roisin-lambert#tab-1

Cohort/Start PhD: 2024-2025

Worlding the Nation through Newspaper Cartoons (1870–1924)

Leiden University, LUCAS

Supervisor(s): Sara Polak, Frans Willem Korsten, and Kirsty Rolfe

Worlding the Nation through Newspaper Cartoons (1870–1924) investigates how late 19th- and early 20th-century American illustrated periodicals and comic strips caricatured Chinese immigrants as racialized objects of play. The project examines how visual and narrative play functioned as a medium through which racial boundaries were staged, tested, and enforced in the United States. Simultaneously, it traces moments of counter-play enacted by Chinese immigrants that disrupted and destabilized their racialized representations.

Part of the ERC project WORLDING AMERICA, this research brings together play theory, performance studies, and Asian American history to analyze how popular visual media shaped ideas of nationhood and belonging, while exposing the tensions and contradictions that existed within these cultural performances.