Performance Studies in Canada
Tracing performance studies paths in Canada.
Description
Since its inception as an institutionalized discipline in the United States during the 1980s, performance studies has focused on the interdisciplinary analysis of a broad spectrum of cultural behaviours including theatre, dance, folklore, popular entertainments, performance art, protests, cultural rituals, and the performance of self in everyday life. Performance Studies in Canada brings together a diverse group of scholars to explore the national emergence of performance studies as a field in Canada. To date, no systematic attempts has been made to consider how this methodology is being taught, applied, and rethought in Canadian contexts, and Canadian performance studies scholarship remains largely unacknowledged within international discussions about the discipline. This collection fills this gap by identifying multiple origins of performance studies scholarship in the country and highlighting significant works of performance theory and history that are rooted in Canadian culture. Essays illustrate how specific institutional conditions and cultural investments – Indigenous, francophone, multicultural, and more – produce alternative articulations of “performance” and reveal national identity as a performative construct. A state-of-the-art work on the state of the field, Performance Studies in Canada foregrounds national and global performance knowledge to invigorate the discipline around the world.
Reviews
"Distinguishing itself from the dominant national American and British inflections of performance studies, this volume's strong Indigenous component to its conception of performance studies in Canada marks out new terrain for performance studies internationally." Michael McKinnie, Queen Mary University of London
"Performance Studies in Canada offers the first comprehensive account of the field of performance studies as it is being distinctively articulated in Canada. Distinguishing itself from the dominant national American and British inflections of performance studies, the strong Indigenous component to its conception of performance studies in Canada marks out new terrain for performance studies internationally." Michael McKinnie, Queen Mary University of London