Books about theater in Chile, India, Palestine, South Korea; about Black queer dance and Asian-American camp. The fourteen finalists for this year’s Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education are, as usual, a highly eclectic mix of academic theater books, some of which don’t seem to have much to do with theater at all, viewing “performance” more broadly. They are listed below alphabetically by book title, the titles linked to its page on Amazon for more information (some providing sample chapters) or to purchase (some of which are free on Kindle.) The winners will be announced on the association’s conference starting July 21.
A Movement’s Promise: The Making of Contemporary Palestian Theater, Samer Al-Saber Stanford University Press
the story of the Palestinian Theater Movement over nearly three decades, as they created plays and productions that articulated versions of Palestinian identity, critiqued social norms, celebrated and extended Palestinian cultural values, and challenged the power disparity created by the Occupation.
Beyond the Sewol: Activist Theatre and Performance in South Korea and the Diaspora, Areum Jeong University of Hawai’i Press
On April 16, 2014, the Sewol ferry capsized off the southwestern coast of South Korea, killing 304 people, including 250 students. The helplessness that many Koreans and others felt at the sinking was sharpened by the ways the Korean government mishandled the disaster, which has become the most galvanizing event in contemporary South Korean history. Throughout this rollercoaster of national trauma, public outrage, hope for change, and broken promises, an activist movement has taken shape among artists working through the medium of performance to process the disaster, commemorate its victims, and advocate for public change.
Black Queer Dance: Gay Men and the Politics of Passing for Almost Straight, Mark Broomfield Routledge
examines one of the most visible crucibles for masculinity—the male dancer—and illuminates the contradictory and conditional acceptance of black gay men’s contributions to American modern dance. The book questions the politics of “coming out” and situates a new framework of “doing out” for understanding marginalized black LGBTQ people in the 20th and 21st century
Cosmo-Modernism and Theater in India: Writing and Staging Multilingual Modernisms, Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker Columbia University Press
a look at urban theater in India, which took shape postindependence as a large and complex field produced in more than sixteen major languages,
Curating the Commons: Socially Engaged Public Art, Katie Arfara University of Michigan Press
Since the 2008 financial crisis and Occupy movements around the globe, artists have increasingly turned to socially engaged public art to create new models of artistic production and community engagement.
Extravagant Camp: The Queer Abjection of Asian America, Chris A. Eng NYU Press
follows campy performances that imaginatively restage the camps that have been central to dominant narratives of Asian American history: Chinese railroad labor, Japanese American incarceration, Vietnam War refugee resettlement, and counterinsurgency camps across US imperial entanglements in the Philippines
Knowing as Moving: Perception, Memory, and Place, Susan Leigh Foster Duke University Press
replaces the Cartesian-colonial “I think, therefore I am” with a decolonial “I move, and therefore I know.”
Mass Performance: Systems and Citizens, Kimberly Jannarone University of Michigan Press
examines mass performance systems from the first major festival of the French Revolution through the democratic and socialist movements of the nationalizing nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe, to totalitarian communist and socialist regimes in the twentieth century, ending with contemporary North Korea.
Performing Citizenship in Postdictatorship Chile: Cultural Policy and the Making of Political Dramaturgies,Jennifer Joan Thompson Northwestern University Press
traces the ways artists confronted and resisted the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, how they then reimagined the body politic during the early transitional period and challenged official constructions of history and memory as the transition to democracy progressed,
Reclaiming Time: Race, Temporality, and Black Expressive Culture, Isaiah Matthew Wooden Northwestern University Press
surveys a diverse array of performance-based and visual texts to explore the rich practices of contemporary Black expressive culture, including dramatic works by playwrights Eisa Davis, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Robert O’Hara
Racial Care: On Asian American Suffering and Survival, James McMaster Duke University Press
studies the forms of care that Asian Americans have taken up to survive the suffering they experience under neoliberal capitalism and white supremacy in the United States. Uplifting examples from Asian American theater, performance art, visual culture, film, poetry, protest, and everyday life.
Shakespeare and Antiblack World-Making, Matthieu Chapman Palgrave Macmillan
argues that American and English societies have deployed Shakespeare for four hundred years as a mechanism to construct and reinforce antiblackness.
Unsettling Acts: Performing Transnational Adoption, Jieun Lee The Ohio State University Press
Analyzes contemporary theater and performance works about Korean transnational adoption that challenges longstanding ideas about adoption.
Youth, Power, Performance: Applied Theatre with Systemically Marginalized Youth, Diane Conrad Intellect
Practical strategies for engaging with youth based on the author’s experience in three specific contexts: in alternative high schools, in a youth jail and with street-involved youth.
Your purchase through some of the links above may generate a small commission, which helps support my work. Many of these books are (or will be) available to borrow at the New York Public Library and other local libraries.
