Digital Performance in Everyday Life

Lyndsay Michalik Gratch is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Syracuse University, NY. Her research, creative work, and teaching focus on the connections between communication, performance studies, digital culture, creative adaptation, and remix.Ariel Gratch is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media at Utica College, NY, where he teaches courses in storytelling, performance studies, and rhetoric. His research focuses on the impact of storytelling on our everyday lives.

"Digital Performance in Everyday Life flawlessly and effortlessly draws together performance studies, media studies, and digital studies with a theoretical sophistication and methodological precision that is both wonderfully complex and immensely accessible. Each chapter is a new journey through the central premise of the book that the notion that online and offline lives are separate is a false dichotomy and that performance is at the center of everyday digital life. By weaving together nuanced discussions of theory and concepts with personal stories and contemporary cultural critique, the book presents a remarkably compelling argument about digital performance while simultaneously making a case for the relevance of the history of performance studies theory and scholarship to media and digital studies in the 21st century." Mindy Fenske, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina (UofSC). "Ambitious and timely, Digital Performance in Everyday Life offers a robust and engaging theorization of the ubiquitous virtual encounters that now constitute our everyday reality." — Henry Bial, University of Kansas"Digital Performance in Everyday Life is a feat of rigorous interdisciplinarity. The text is masterfully composed, and amply demonstrates the capaciousness of performance theory within a framework informed by social network theories, surveillance theory, black feminism and design justice. Digital Performance in Everyday Life is a laudable accomplishment of scholarship, made all the more exceptional by its thoughtful approach to access and its subject matter. It is a vital book, and profoundly teachable one." — Sydney Skybetter, Brown University

• 1. Introduction to Digital Performance in Everyday Life 2. Digital Performances of Self-identity 3. Everyday Performances of Surveillance, Sousveillance, and Coveillance 4. Virtual Habits and Rituals 5. Digital Mourning and Memorialization 6. The Virtual Storyteller 7. “Re-”: Internet Memes as Digital Performances of Adaptation 8. Slactivism 9.Political Theatre in Everyday Life 10. Conclusion