'Uncle Tom Mania' looks at the novel 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and the songs, plays, sketches, translations and imitations it inspired. In particular it shows how the theatrical mode of blackface minstrelsy, the question of enslavement, and America's emerging cultural identity affected how the novel was read and discussed. "Until Uncle Tom's Cabin, Meer says, little truly common ground existed on which the United States and Britain could debate slavery....