The SAGE Handbook of Performance Studies

The SAGE Handbook of Performance Studies brings together, in a single volume,  discussions of the major research in performance studies and identifies directions for further investigation. It is the only comprehensive collection on the theories, methods, politics, and practices of performance relating to life and culture. Edited by D. Soyini Madison and Judith Hamera, this Handbook serves artists, scholars, and  students across the disciplines by delineating the scope of the field, the critical and interpretive methods used, and the theoretical and ethical presumptions that guide work in this exciting and growing area.   Key Features: Demonstrates the utility of performance studies for diverse academic audiences by organizing topics into six primary realms of performance inquiry—Theory, History, Literature, Pedagogy, Ethnography, and Politics Includes engaging explications of performance theory and methods that help readers grasp their significance and to apply them to a wide range of sites and practices Summarizes key theoretical and methodological challenges across the field and provides connections with other bodies of research to advance further work in the discipline Provides balanced coverage of issues of enduring interest (such as the relationship between performance and politics; performance and ethnography) as well as those currently flourishing in the field (for example, relationships between performance and pedagogy)  This Handbook opens a range of paradigms and queries that demonstrates the scope and influence of performance.  It will be a welcome addition to any academic library and is of interest to researchers, scholars, and students in the fields of Communication Studies, Performance Studies, Theatre Arts, and Cultural Studies.  

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Performance Studies at the Intersections - D. Soyini Madison and Judith Hamera Performance and Theory Part I Introduction: Performance Trouble - Della Pollock 1. Stages: Queers, Punks, and the Utopian Performative - Jose Esteban Munoz 2. Never, Again - Rebecca Schneider 3. Performance and Globalization - Jon McKenzie 4. Performance, Performativity, and Cultural Poesis in Practices of Everyday Life - Judith Hamera Performance and History Part II Introduction: Performing History: A Politics of Location - Lisa Merrill 5. Genealogies of Performance Studies - Shannon Jackson 6. Memory, Remembering, and Histories of Change: A Performance Praxis - Della Pollock 7. Minstrelsy and Mental Metempsychosis: Mid-Nineteenth Century American Women′s Performance Criticism - Gay Gibson Cima 8. What to Do When Nuclear War Breaks Out - Tracy C. Davis Performance and Literature Part III Introduction: Performance of and Beyond Literature - Paul Edwards 9. Shifting Contexts in Personal Narrative Performance - Kristin M. Langellier and Eric E. Peterson 10. The Constructed Self: Strategic and Aesthetic Choices in Autobiographical Performance - Lynn C. Miller and Jacqueline Taylor 11. The Strange Case of the Body in the Performance of Literature Classroom: An Enduring Mystery - Bruce Henderson 12. On the Bias: From Performance of Literature to Performance Composition - Ruth Laurion Bowman and Michael S. Bowman 13. Staging Paradox: The Local Art of Adaptation - Paul Edwards Performance and Pedagogy Part IV Introduction: Performance and Pedagogy - Bryant Keith Alexander 14. Fieldwork in the Performance Studies Classroom: Learning Objectives and the Activist Curriculum - Nathan Stucky 15. Ambulant Pedagogy - Mady Schutzman 16. Pedagogy on the Move: New Intersections in (Between) the Educative and the Performative - Greg Dimitriadis 17. Unlocking the Doors for Incarcerated Women Through Performance and Creative Writing - Kristen Bervig Valentine 18. The Politics and Ethics of Performance Pedagogy: Toward a Pedagogy of Hope - Norman K. Denzin Performance and Ethnography Part V Introduction: Performance and Ethnography, Performing Ethnography, Performance Ethnography - Iya Omi Osun Olomo (Joni L. Jones) 19. Dwight Conquergood′s "Rethinking Ethnography" - D. Soyini Madison 20. Rethinking Ethnography: Towards a Critical Cultural Politics - Dwight Conquergood 21. Ethnography and the Politics of Adaptation: Leon Forest′s Divine Days - Derek Goldman 22. "She Attempted to Take Over the Choreography of the Sex Act": Dance Ethnography and the Movement Vocabulary of Sex and Labor - Barbara Browning 23. Staging Fieldwork/Performing Human Rights - D. Soyini Madison Performance and Politics Part VI Introduction: Performance and Politics: Themes and Arguments - Judith Hamera and Dwight Conquergood 24. The Problem Democracy Is Supposed to Solve: The Politics of Community-Based Performance - Jan Cohen-Cruz 25. Black Performance Studies: Genealogies, Politics, Futures - E. Patrick Johnson 26. Lethal Theatre: Performance, Punishment, and the Death Penalty - Dwight Conquergood 27. Who Is This Ancestor?: Performing Memory in Ghana′s Slave Castle-Dungeons (A Multimedia Performance Meditation) - Sandra L. Richards 28. The Polemics and Potential of Theatre Studies and Performance - Jill Dolan

About the Author :
D. Soyini Madison is professor of Performance Studies and Anthropology, and served as Interim Director of the Program in African Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance (2010, Cambridge UP) and the co-editor with Judith Hamera of the SAGE Handbook of Performance Studies (2006, SAGE). Madison lived in West Africa as a Senior Fulbright Scholar and has conducted field research over the past ten years on the performance tactics of local human rights activists in Ghana. Judith Hamera received her B.A. (1980) in Mass Communication from Wayne State University and her M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1987) in Interpretation and Performance Studies respectively from Northwestern University. She is currently the Acting Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, and Professor of Communication Studies and Theatre Arts and Dance at California State University, Los Angeles. She has served as Editor of Text and Performance Quarterly, the journal of the National Communication Association Division of Performance Studies. Her publications have appeared in Cultural Studies, TDR: The Drama Review, Modern Drama, Text and Performance Quarterly, Theatre Topics, and Women and Language. She is the recipient of the National Communication Association′s Lilla Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies, and was named President′s Distinguished Professor at California State University in 2004. She is coeditor, with D. Soyini Madison, of the SAGE Handbook of Performance Studies.

Review :
"College-level reference holdings will appreciate this single-volume set of surveys of the major research in performance studies: the only comprehensive gathering to analyze and pose the theories, methods, politics and practices of performance as it relates to life and culture. Here is a meeting point for history, theory, and literature which uses the foundations of performance theory and methods to help readers understand how it′s applied across the board between disciplines." "College-level reference holdings will appreciate this single-volume set of surveys of the major research in performance studies: the only comprehensive gathering to analyze and pose the theories, methods, politics and practices of performance as it relates to life and culture. Here is a meeting point for history, theory, and literature which uses the foundations of performance theory and methods to help readers understand how it′s applied across the board between disciplines."