Performance Studies

ISBN-13: 9780333786741 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 213 str.

Erin Striff

Opis

One of the first collections of articles on performance studies, this reader maps the field for those new to the discipline and shows the way in which a variety of events and rituals may be read as performance. The articles included help clarify what constitutes performance studies, as well as providing a valuable introduction to the many theoretical perspectives, including feminist, queer, post-structuralist, and post-colonial theories, which are used to read performance in culture. Acts considered range from those that can be easily identified as performance, such as the strip show, to those that are more theoretically complex, such as performative speech.

Spis treści

Introduction: Locating Performance Studies; E.Striff.- POPULAR PERFORMANCE.- The Power Team: Muscular Christianity and the Spectacle of Conversion; S.Mazer .- Ethnological Show Business: Footlighting the Dark Continent; B.Lindfors.- Striptease: Desire, Mimetic Jeopardy, and Performing Spectators; K.Liepe-Levinson.- PERFORMING BODIES, PERFORMANCE ART.- The Surgical Self: Body Alteration and Identity; P. Auslander.- Reconsidering Homophobia: Karen Finley's Indiscretions; L.Hart.- PERFORMING HISTORIES/MEMORIES.- Spectacular Suffering: Performing Presence, Absence and Witness at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; V.M.Patraka.- Hearing Anita Hill and Clarence Tomas; P.Phelan.- PERFORMANCE AND THE WORLD.- The Street is the Stage; R.Schechner.- Culture and Performance in the Circum-Atlantic World; J.Roach.- Jewels Brought Back from Bondage: Black Music and the Politics of Authenticity; P.Gilroy.- PERFORMATIVITY/PERFORMANCE.- Critically Queer; J.Butler.- Choreographies of Gender; S.L.Foster.- Summaries and Notes.- Suggestions for Further Reading.- Notes on Contributors.- Index.

O autorze

ERIN STRIFF is Assistant Professor of English at Hartford University, USA. She has published on feminist theatre and performance art.

Blurb

What is performance? We do not need to be in a theatre to think about the theatricality of how we behave in culture, but can a performance exist if there are no spectators? How do we know when performances are taking place if there is no curtain rising and falling? What does the act of performance achieve? How does performance studies attempt to answer those questions?

This collection of lively and stimulating articles on performance studies provides an understandable introduction to the field, and to the way in which performance touches all of our lives - from the rituals and ceremonies in which we partake, to the way we present ourselves depending on the company we keep. Together these articles help clarify what constitutes performance studies and introduce the reader to the many theoretical perspectives - including feminist, queer, post-structuralist and post-colonial - which are used to study performance in culture. Acts considered range from those that can be easily identified as performance, such as the strip-show, to the more theoretically complex, such as performative speech.

One of the first of its kind on performance studies, this reader is an essential text for all those with an interest in the subject, or who are approaching it for the first time.