Performance Studies

Title: Performance Studies
Author: Striff, Erin
Price: $69.95

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.


CONTENTS
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


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

PHILIP AUSLANDER Professor of the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology
JUDITH BUTLER Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley
SUSAN LEIGH FOSTER Professor in Dance at the University of California, Riverside
PAUL GILROY Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Yale University
LYNDA HART Was Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania (died in 2000)
BERNTH LINDFORS Professor of English and African Literature at the University of Texas
KATHERINE LIEPE-LEVINSON Has worked as a professional dancer, actor, choreographer, director and playwright in the U.S. and Europe. She currently works as a freelance writer and arts education consultant in New York City
SHARON MAZER Head of the Department of Theatre and Film Studies at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand
VIVIAN M. PATRAKA Professor of English and Theatre at Bowling Green State University
PEGGY PHELAN Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and Visiting Professor of Drama at Stanford University
JOSEPH ROACH Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Theatre at Yale University
RICHARD SCHECHNER Professor of Performance Studies at New York University

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date: 27/09/2002
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780333786741
Publishing status: OS In-stock BN