Unnatural Acts: Theorizing the Performative – serie

". . . I have used essays from the book to help dance graduate students push their thinking beyond the studio and their own physical experience and to realize the varied resources, approaches, and theoretical positions possible in writing about the body." —Dance Research Journal"Choreographing History . . . assembles an impressive diversity of sites, disciplines and critical approaches . . . [and] includes not only historical bodies and discourses, but also the very bodies of the historians themselves." —Parachute"This volume is not only full of gems (the very lineup of preeminent scholars is impressive), but is also a neat cross-section of the academic conventions and mannerisms of our time." —Dance Chronicle". . . [an] important step. . . in the ineluctable dance by postmodern historians across a bridge that spans the gaps among disciplines, between theory and practice, and betweeen present and past." —Theatre JournalHistorians of science, sexuality, the arts, and history itself focus on the body, merging the project of writing about the body with theoretical concerns in the writing of history.

" . . . will draw a wide readership from the ranks of literary critics, film scholars, science studies scholars and the growing legion of 'literature and science' researchers. It should be among the essentials in a posthumanist toolbox." —Richard DoyleAutomatic teller machines, castrati, lesbians, The Terminator: all participate in the profound technological, representation, sexual, and theoretical changes in which bodies are implicated. Posthuman Bodies addresses new interfaces between humans and technology that are radically altering the experience of our own and others' bodies.

Acts of Intervention examines the ways that gay men have used theatre and performance to intervene in the AIDS crisis. It discusses dramatic texts and public performances—from cabarets and candlelight vigils to full-scale Broadway productions such as Angels in America and Rent—that have shaped, and been shaped by, the history of AIDS in national, regional, and local contexts. Román examines mainstream as well as alternative and activist forms of theatre, including solo performance, community-based projects, mixed-media events, activist demonstrations, and AIDS educational theatre initiatives.Acts of Intervention traces the ways in which performance and theater have participated in and informed the larger cultural politics of race, sexuality, citizenship, and AIDS in the United States during the last fifteen years. The book discusses not only how the theater has provided a forum for gay male response to the epidemic but also the degree to which those responses have in turn shaped the ideological formulation of AIDS. Román offers a new method for mapping the relation between AIDS and representation by combining interpretive strategies from performance theory, gay and lesbian studies, critical race discourse, and cultural studies.This book is dedicated to writing the history of theatrical interventions in the AIDS epidemic, including performances whose official history has been largely neglected or forgotten. Because many early performances about AIDS left little or no documentation, the task of constructing an AIDS theatre historiography confronts immediate problems and limitations.Acts of Intervention argues that the history of AIDS performance is located at the juncture of memory and disappearance, of mourning and survival, of representation and its impossibility in the context of epidemic loss.

"Latina Performance is a densely theorized treatment of rich materials." —MultiCultural Review"Arrizón's important book revolves around the complex issues of identity formation and power relations for US women performers of Latin American descent." —ChoiceLatina Performance examines the Latina subject whose work as dramatist, actress, theorist, and/or critic further defines the field of theater and performance in the United States. Alicia Arrizón looks at the cultural politics that flows from the intersection of gender, ethnicity, race, class, and sexuality.

"This is the first extended study I know of what the author calls a "Holocaust performative," . . . .[The author] asks what a "holocaust performative" might look like and how such a study might illuminate "events of this particular genocide that are unrepresentable and outside the parameters of representation itself" . . . .[Patraka] contributes an important and possibly contentious dimension to Holocaust studies." —James Young"Theater, always a medium of fragile bodies and intractable ideologies, meets its biggest challenge in the Holocaust. How represent the unrepresentable? Vivian Patraka brings postmodern paradoxes into the heart of Holocaust meanings. A superb critic of drama, Patraka analyzes a wide range of recent plays, helping us to decode fascism's insidious mutations even in the most earnest theatrical exposes. Richly researched, feelingly written Spectacular Suffering: Theatre, Fascism, and the Holocaust brings performance theory, feminism, history, and Jewish cultural studies into unique dialogue. There is material here to fill several course syllabi. A wonderful and important book."—Elin Diamond, Rutgers UniversitySpectacular Suffering: Theatre, Fascism and the Holocaust considers how we remember historical instances of suffering and atrocity, framing its central questions to reflect larger cultural shifts in how we position ourselves in relation to history, performance, and memory.