(essays & projects)

The Search for a More Desirable Origin: Steven Cohen’s
The Cradle of Humankind (2011)
    [pdf]
Sonja Smit

Michael Jackson’s Gesamtkunstwerk: Artistic Interrelation, Immersion,
and Interactivity From the Studio to the Stadium
    [pdf]
Sylvia J. Martin

Some Remarks On Sacred Cows: Revisiting Method Technique   [pdf]
D. A. Begelman

Assimilating Suffering: Performing Banality in Living Out    [pdf]
Judith Rodriguez

Colors of Water: Light on Healing   [pdf]
John Farrell Kelly

Through My Own Gaze: An Arab Feminist Struggling With Patriarchal
Arabness Through Western Hegemony
    [pdf]
Haneen Shafeeq Ghabra

A Musical Dialogue    [pdf & audio]
Steve Phalen

“Terror as Theater”: Unraveling Spectacle in Post 9/11 Literatures    [pdf]
Elise Silva

(review essays)

Hearing Performance as Music    [pdf]
Chris McRae

Performing in Space and Place    [pdf]
Julianna Kirschner

(performance praxis)

Lost Lines: A Solo Performance    [html, video, images]
&
A Performance of Lost Lines    [video]
Lesa Lockford

The Man on the Hill: Working for Social and Political Change    [pdf]
Liz Crow

(book reviews)

Sexual Discretion: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Passing (Jeffrey Q. McCune)    [html]
reviewed by Javon Johnson

Black Performance Theory (Thomas F. DeFrantz & Anita Gonzalez, Eds.)    [html]
reviewed by Breigha M. Adeyemo

(Re)Constructing Maternal Performance in Twentieth-Century American Drama
(L. Bailey McDaniel)
    [html]
reviewed by Barbara Salvadori Heritage



<notes on contributors>

» Breigha M. Adeyemo is a graduate student in the department of Performance Studies at Texas A&M University. Her research focuses broadly on relations between Africans and African Americans. More specifically, she examines the causes and implications of Nigerian constructs of African Americans, paying particular attention to how these constructs influence the ways Nigerians perform their identity in the United States.

» D. A. Begelman, PhD, is a practicing clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist with degrees in psychology and philosophy from Yeshiva University and New York University. He has held positions in hospitals, clinics and academia (including Yale University) as well as being an associate and contributing editor to several psychology journals. In New York City, he studied art under Mark Rothko, trained as a ballet dancer, and studied at The Actor’s Workshop. He toured summer stock in Maine and New Jersey and has acted in numerous plays and productions over the past several decades.

» Liz Crow is an artist-activist working in film, performance and text, using the power of creative work as a tool for change. She is founder of Roaring Girl Productions and is currently completing a practice-led doctorate at The University of the West of England. For more on the performance of Bedding Out, direct your web browser here.

» Haneen Shafeeq Ghabra is a PhD student in the department of Communication Studies at the University of Denver, specializing in intersectional transnational feminism with a focus on Middle Eastern and/or Muslim women and disenfranchised communities such as the Palestinians. Using decolonial rhetorical criticism, ethnography and performative writing, she focuses on the marginalizing forces of hegemonic text, images and bodies.

» Barbara Salvadori Heritage is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Theatre at the University of Missouri. Her research interests include applied, experimental, and Latin American theatre; postcolonialism, intercultural performance, and directing. She is currently working on her dissertation about theatre in Brazil during the so-called “Years of Lead.”

» Javon Johnson is an assistant professor of communication and performance studies at San Francisco State University, and an internationally touring performance poet. Additionally he is completing two books: Killing Poetry: Performing Blackness, Poetry Slams and the Making of Spoken Word Communities (forthcoming, Rutgers University Press) and Chiraq: War Cries, Love and Other Stories from the Murder Capital (Northwestern University Press).

» John Farrell Kelly is a US veteran. He studied literature, theory, and writing at the University of Hawai’i Maui College and the University of Alaska Anchorage. Recent publications include “Light on Water: Conversations on Emergent Writing Methodologies” with Mona Livholts, Writers in Conversation.

» Julianna Kirschner is a doctoral student in the Cultural Studies program at Claremont Graduate University. She is also a Lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at California State University, Northridge. Her research interests include the communicative practices associated with grief and loss, ethnographic explorations into feminist pedagogy, and the politics of space and place.

» Lesa Lockford is a Professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She teaches courses in qualitative inquiry, performance studies, acting, and voice for the stage. Her book, Performing Femininity: Rewriting Gender Identity was published in 2004 in the Ethnographic Alternatives series for AltaMira. Her essays have appeared in various journals including Qualitative Inquiry, The International Review of Qualitative Research, Theatre Annual, and Text and Performance Quarterly.

» Sylvia J. Martin is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at The University of Hong Kong. She earned her PhD in Anthropology at UC Irvine, and has conducted ethnographic research on the production process in the Hollywood and Hong Kong film/television industries. A recipient of a postdoctoral Fulbright Fellowship in Hong Kong, Martin has published on media, culture, performance, and globalization in Visual Anthropology Review, Society, and American Ethnologist, and in anthologies Film and Risk and The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies. Her current manuscript looks at production and performance processes in commercial entertainment sites.

» Chris McRae (PhD, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida where he teaches courses in Performance Studies. He is the author of Performative Listening: Hearing Others in Qualitative Research and several essays on music, pedagogy, and listening.

» Steve Phalen, Ph.D., is a visiting assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls. His academic interests involve exploring communication as a dialogic practice and music as a means of self and communal expression. He may be reached at steve.phalen.phd@gmail.com.

» Judith Rodriguez is a doctoral student and Graduate Opportunity Fellow in the Culture and Theory PhD Program at the University of California, Irvine. Judith’s work interrogates the performance of ethno-nation and multiracialism within Puerto Rican Studies and Latina/o Studies. By centering the (neo)colonial concept of blanqueamiento (whitening) within the performative gestures of juridical discourse, film, theatre, and punk, she illuminates the violence produced by the transhistorical force of anti- Blackness and its effects on revolutionary possibilities in Puerto Rico and its diaspora.

» Elise Silva is an assistant librarian in information literacy and library instruction at Brigham Young University. She was formerly a visiting faculty member in BYU’s English department where she taught courses on writing, American literature, and literary theory.

» Sonja Smit is a post-doctoral scholar at Rhodes University (South Africa). She is both an academic researcher and a choreographer/live artist. Her research focusses on experimental approaches to performance theory, philosophy, and creative approaches to knowledge production. Smit’s PhD research investigated how whiteness has been challenged through performance in post-apartheid South Africa. The research on Steven Cohen’s The Cradle of Humankind was located within a broader critique of whiteness by South African artists. Smit also lectures at the Rhodes Drama Department, and has choreographed, designed and performed on various platforms, since 2009.



Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies (issn: 1557-2935)

editor-in-chief: Michael LeVan (Vancouver, WA)
the city editor: Daniel Makagon (DePaul University)
digital horizons editors: Craig Gingrich-Philbrook (Southern Illinois University) and Daniel (Jake) Simmons
   (Missouri State University)
performance & pedagogy editor: open
book review editor: Christopher J. McRae (University of South Florida)

banner photo/design by Michael LeVan
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