(New England Theatre Conference, 2014) Cantu, Maya
Billed as a "Modern Musical Comedy with Old-Fashioned Charm," the
Civil War-set Bloomer Girl (1944) followed Oklahoma! as part of a
World War ll-era cycle of Broadway musicals steeped in period Americana.
This article argues that Bloomer Girl - connecting First-wave
feminism to Rosie the Riveter, and the abolitionist movement with civil
rights - offered a complex vision of progressive nostalgia, advancing
utopian aims of social justice that anticipate Finian's Rainbow.
