Blackface Cuba, 1840-1895 Jill Lane "A model for theatre scholarship on racial impersonation."--Theatre Journal "Blackface performance, treated in U.S. scholarship as if it were an exclusively national phenomenon, has not until now been the subject of an extended study for Cuba, where it was the main vehicle for shaping a sense of hybridity. Lane shows that performance reiterated the contradiction between blacks and whites while trying to overcome it. From acting up to impersonation, Lane links some liberating practices of anticolonialism in the Americas with the binding mechanisms for...

Focusing on the living arts--dance, theatre, music, performance art, ritual, and popular entertainment-- performance studies expands our understanding of -performance- as both a vital artistic practice and a means by which to understand social and cultural processes. Bridging the gap between cultural studies, performing arts, and anthropology, performance studies explores myriad ways in which performance creates meaning and shapes our everyday lives.

The broadest and most inclusive volume to date, The Ends of Performance both celebrates and critiques the institutionalization...