'Julia Walker's Performance and Modernity has all the electricity of a lightning bolt. Brilliantly reimagining performance in light of the technological, representational, and ontological crises of modernity, this book provides a breathtaking history of performance that is both truly global and shockingly new. Meticulously reconstructing accounts of changes in styles of performance as an embodiment (in every sense) of the forces of modernity itself, Walker sees different styles of performance - from the 'point' technique to psychological realism - not merely encoding desires for and fears of modernity, but enacting and fomenting them. Reading across many national traditions and genres of performance, this book recasts our sense of the modern in a way few other books have.' MSA 2021 Book Prize Committee (2022)
1. Money: Transacting Value on the Romantic Stage; 2. The Railroad: The Throughline to Modern Consciousness on the Naturalist Stage; 3. The Nation-State: Eurhythmics and the Bohemian Model of Affiliation; 4. Advertising: Avant-Garde Provocations and the Commercialization of Aesthetic Taste; 5. Air Conditioning: Psychological Realism and the Circulation of 'Cool'.