Performance Studies Commons^™

Modes Of Cartoon Corporeal Performance, Gregory Langner

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation project works to introduce and interrogate a phenomenon I am calling cartoon corporeality. The phenomenon refers to the varied ways in which cartoons “escape” their usual two-dimensionality through performance, appearing to manifest in physical environments in ways that should be understood as culturally impactful. Cartoon corporeality encompasses different modes of performance wherein the explicit visual presence of a cartoon subject informs an immediately observable physical impact through the body of the performer. I interrogate the phenomenon by focusing on four select modes of cartoon corporeal performance: videogame play, cosplay, theatrical adaptation, and the active weaving of cartoons …

From Gaza City To The Golden Gate A Call To The International Theatre Community To Join The Struggle For Cultural Justice, Jessica Litwak

Student Articles, Chapters, Presentations, Learning Objects

On 9 August 2018, Gaza theatremaker Hossam Madhoun was chatting with friends a little more than fifty yards from the city’s Al Mishal Cultural Centre. One friend, who had just returned to the area, asked where his theatre and performance could be produced in town. The beautiful and well-equipped Red Crescent Society, perhaps? Madhoun had to remind him it had been bombed by the Israeli Army during the military offensive on Gaza in 2008. The friend then asked about the theatre at Holst Cultural Center.

“When was the last time you visited Gaza?” Madhoun asked. “Hamas turned the Holst into …

“In The Beginning Was Body Language” Clowning And Krump As Spiritual Healing And Resistance, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In the neighborhood of HollyWatts in Los Angeles, dance allows a shift from existing as bodies presented as sites of threat and extinction to sources of spiritual empowerment. Clowning and Krump dancers—their subjectivity and their dancing bodies—negotiate survival from trauma and socioeconomic marginalization. I argue that the dancers’ performances act as embodied narratives of “re-membering in the flesh.” The performance acts as a spiritual retrieval and re-integration of traumatic memories and afflictions into memory through the body. Choreography and quotes from dancers support the claim that Krump and Clowning is “re-membering in the flesh” that enacts self-worth, self-defined sexuality, and …

Impact By Intention: An Argument For Forensics As A High-Impact Practice, Vincent L. Stephens

National Forensic Journal

This essay locates forensics within national discourse about high-impact practices (HIPs) in higher education, as outlined by scholar George D. Kuh. Forensics shares all the characteristics associated with the ten promising practices Kuh (2008) outlined initially. Though Kuh's original overview and expanded list of practices (Kuh, 2016) serve as reference points for addressing HIPs, forensics has not been recognized as a HIP. The essay argues that framing forensics as a HIP could enrich advocacy efforts to start and/or sustain current forensics programs. The article connects the fiscal climate with the assessment paradigm, examines the ways forensics adheres to Kuh's definition, …

Performing Arts And Performance Anxiety, Jacklyn Sue Bascomb

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Background: Performing arts are a broad view of a range of human activities that occur in front of an audience with the attempt to express human experience and emotion. Performing artists consist of dancers, instrumental musicians, vocal musicians, and drama/comedy or theater/actors. Actors and instrumental musicians participate in tremendous training to provide the emotional story they deliver. Multiple factors contribute to mental and physical stress experienced by a performer. Performance anxiety results from a performer’s fear of an adverse reaction or evaluation of their performance. Performance anxiety can be debilitating with negative effects on a performer’s performance, career, and health. …

Volume 36 - Front Matter

National Forensic Journal

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Richard E. Paine, Emily M. Cramer

National Forensic Journal

No abstract provided.

Is It Prose Or Is It Drama? Distinguishing Events Based On Judging Criteria, Justin J. Rudnick, Anthony Peavy, Balencia Crosby, Alyssa Harter, Cristy Dougherty

National Forensic Journal

Genre distinctions have been a source of confusion and contention in the collegiate forensics community, particularly in terms of distinguishing between appropriate source material for prose and drama. As the most powerful indicators of current forensic performance evaluations, ballots help illustrate the judging paradigms shaping the community. To that end, we conducted a content analysis of preliminary-round prose and drama ballots from the 2014 NFA championship tournament to determine how judges distinguish between prose and drama. Results illustrate substantial similarities in how each event is evaluated by judges. We discuss implications for this distinction in the conclusion of this essay.

How Can Sotl Help Forensic Educators Assess Their Performance?, Leah White

National Forensic Journal

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a movement among educators which seeks to acknowledge the work we do teaching as its own form of unique scholarship. SoTL argues the work we do as teachers can be peer-reviewed, critiqued and shared with others in our academic communities. The goal of this paper is to outline how forensic educators can use SoTL approaches to help build an argument about their scholarly activity as illustrated in coaching practice. SoTL provides a frame through which we can articulate the significance of this aspect of our scholarly performance.

Shush: A Creative (Re)Construction, Kathleen Spring

Faculty & Staff Publications

Shush: A Creative (Re)Construction stems from work conducted during a sabbatical in fall 2017. The audio piece, Shush Me Awake, is a composition that explores the shush as a performative act. The accompanying framing essay uses an autoethnographic approach to provide a contextualized look at the composition process for this piece, while simultaneously situating it within existing scholarship in library and information studies on the image of the librarian and stereotypes. The composer notes provide additional technical details about the audio piece itself.

Volume 36 - Full Volume

National Forensic Journal

No abstract provided.

Sea Squad, Liam Geary Baulch

The Goose

The Sea Squad is a band of cheerleaders against climate change. Taking action as a team in formation, they gather momentum, inviting all people to cheer with them, mimicking the infinitely expandable nature of the seas' molecular structure. The work was developed and performed as a bilingual project at Est-Nord-Est in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec, Canada, and has since been performed and exhibited internationally. The following poems are some of the chants that Sea Squad use to get a crowd cheering together against climate change.

Performing The Quality Of Imperceptible Interactions Between Individuals: A Technological Challenge Regarding The Collective, Marine Theunissen

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Contemporary technologies allow incredible possibilities of capturing individuals, but a problem arises when it comes to capturing a chorus, that is to say a "collective body" in motion. This proposal will address the problem of the sensitive capture of the quality of the interrelations between individuals, and of their refined interpretation through algorithms to "output” them in other forms. We will address two questions on the subject: how to capture the relations between individuals within a collective? How to create a circular-causal loop, whose artistic material (the digital data) is the interrelations of a collective, without engendering redundancy in their …

Flying Closer: The Intersection Of Circus And Dance, Emma Thomas

Honors College Theses

Dancers entering the professional industry must consider whether to be a jack of all trades, able to perform any style and any skill, or a specialized performer who has achieved mastery of one specific technique. Because commercial dancers require a greater variety of skill sets, and jobs for commercial dancers such as cruise ships, backup dancing, and Broadway shows, are increasingly asking their dancers to perform aerial arts - and circus companies such as Cirque Du Soleil, and Circa are blending circus and dance, I am arguing that a dancer entering the commercial industry has to also consider the value …

A Narrative And Performative Methodology For Understanding Adolescent Cancer Stories, Patrick Mcelearney

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The field of health communication places considerable attention on coping with cancer, typically using social scientific approaches to investigate uncertainty, information, and/or social networks. Social scientific models of coping with adolescent cancer often measure how behaviors seek to manage cancer’s uncontrollability and/or uncertainty; however, how adolescents cope with cancer has been unclear. Short-term studies show adolescents typically and atypically cope. Long-term studies show a significant portion of survivors exhibit post-traumatic stress. The narrative and performative turns expose the role narratives and performatives play in shaping human subjects as meaning makers rather than merely information sharers. A narrative subject reframes cancer’s …

Strange Woods, Song Park

Graduate School of Art Theses

I am interested in searching for images of women that have not been adequately represented in visual art. As a visual artist, I am directed by my sense of sight to investigate and know something. I like to challenge myself to visualize things that do not already have a visual representation. It has been frustrating for me to create images of women, and I have experienced a deep ambivalence in response to the different images of women I have encountered. The socially and culturally constructed images of women that I have internalized and those that have developed from my own …

Theater As A Civic Practice, Charlie Santos

Senior Honors Projects

Contemporary artists are working within a cultural moment saturated with political fervor. The ideologies of social and political movements such as Black Lives Matter, Queer Rights, and Gun Control weigh heavily on the minds of young artists. More and more, I see actors, writers, and creators struggling to reconcile their identities as artists and identities as political beings. How do artists resolve the internal dissonance between their artistic and political spheres? Is activist art an opportunity to synthesize these two spheres? Or might creating art for political ends pose ethical and/or aesthetic hazards? On the one hand, creating political art …

Dolls Who Speak: Sex Robots, Cyborgs And The Image Of Woman, Victoria E. Pihl Sorensen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the emerging phenomenon of sex robots from a feminist materialist perspective. I explore the current scholarly and popular debates on sex robots, and suggest a reading of sex robots in their machinic, literary and cinematic expressions to move beyond the moral-ethical impasse that seems to dominate sex robot discussions. Employing Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Myth” on a methodological and theoretical level, I argue for an interdisciplinary approach to studying sex robots, which proceeds carefully so as to avoid contributing to sex panic, and which thinks critically about what it might mean to assess sex robots from a feminist …

Building Brand Kurdistan: Helly Luv, The Gender Of Nationhood, And The War On Terror, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

In the early 2000s, the Kurdistan Regional Government hired a US-based firm to begin a public relations campaign called “The Other Iraq.” Since that time, it has worked with a number of PR and lobbying firms to build a cultural, political, and financial apparatus that I refer to as Brand Kurdistan. This apparatus aims to prove to Western audiencesthat the Kurds are a liberal exception in an illiberal Middle East, and to build prospects of KRG’s eventual national independence. This article explores the connections between Brand Kurdistan and the gendering of Kurdish nationalism, focusing particularly on Kurdish pop diva Helly …

Being In Performance: A Philosophical Account Of The Embodied Actor, Brad M. Krumholz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I present and analyze three distinct actor-training exercises primarily through the lens of the Embodied Cognition (EC) branch of contemporary philosophy, which attempts to frame human understanding as a fully embodied interaction with the environment. Drawing from neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, and other branches of philosophy, EC provides both an excellent set of tools and a strong theoretical framework to help explain how people encounter meaning in life. I apply its unique perspectives to this philosophical account of the embodied actor as I analyze the various elements at play in actor training praxis, which allows me to shed …

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.

Re-Imagining The Theatre: Existence And Change, Andres Aguilar

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

With acknowledgement of Nicaraguan Theatre and its different dynamics, this research works to expose and create visibility of current Nicaraguan Theatre with relation to social change in Managua, Nicaragua. The microcosm of theatre is revolutionary in creating the necessary change to reach a state of consciousness that allows others to accept and understand society and others for what they are and what they can be. The theater is simply a tool. Intrinsically, all acts are political, therefore the theater is a political declaration. The theater is, and always will be, a political arena, when the aesthetics of the theater are …

Las Hijas De Violencia: Performance, The Street, And Online Discourse, Madison M. Snider

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores street harassment as a contentious practice in the rhetorical spaces of the street and social media posting through a case study of the performance group Las Hijas de Violencia. Through anarchistic direct action resistance tactics, the group confronted harassers in the streets of Mexico City and their recordings launched global media interest which led to viral online sharing. Widespread sharing of their performance led to the creation of public discursive space, through comments sections, which was utilized to measure attitudes toward street harassment and feminist direct action protest. Contextualized in a growing call for an end to …

Jenyffer Nascimento’S Epic Poetry Of Black Female Empowerment Jenyffer Nascimento: A Poesia Épica De Empoderamento Da Mulher Negra, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

This article presents results of auto-ethnography, literary analysis, and fieldwork research to answer an underlying, perhaps unresolved, concern, relevant to this dossier: how can we produce an ethical dialogue as transnational Black Feminists, among Black Brazilian women, and North American Black women, in an ethical manner, while realizing that one may (not ever) be a part of the “carnival without you in it.” Fertile Earth/ Terra Fertil tells a long overdue epic story to an audience within the poetry: Black women, family members, other times a Black man, Brazil, white women, or “you,” undefined. Joy to pain to chaos, sensuality, …

A Danza De Las Tijeras Continuidad Dinámica Y Reivindicación De La Identidad Indígena Andina / Dance Of The Scissors Dynamic Continuity And Reclamation Of Andean Indigenous Identity, Cinthia Durán

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research project aims to analyze the contemporary ways in which the Dance of Scissors is practiced and reproduced to determine if its continuity outside the place of origin, with all the modifications that it has experienced, can be considered a form of cultural resistance. Resistance in this context is addressed in two specific ways: as a dynamic continuity of Andean indigenous identity and as a tool of cultural vindication. To achieve this goal, during the work period the research methodology consisted of interviewing dancers and scissors musicians; be a participant as observer of skills and essays of Tijeras dancers …

Spectacular Politics And Everyday Performance: Tracing Music From Ceauşescu’S Romania To Multicultural America, Benjamin Dumbauld

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drawing from fieldwork conducted throughout the United States and Canada, this dissertation examines the continued performance of socialist-era music within the Romanian-American community. It addresses why a community largely made up of people who sought to leave the country during the authoritarian regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu continue to perform music tied to that period by tracing the historical performance and reception of multiple genres, ranging from traditional peasant music to folk rock. The dissertation begins by examining the nationalization of Romania’s music industry under the early socialist regime (1944-1965), and locates the difficulties Communist Party members confronted in delineating a …

Embodying Rhythm Nation: Multimodal Hip Hop Dance As A Site For Adolescent Social-Emotional And Political Development, Lauren M. Roygardner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This exploratory study employed qualitative methodology, specifically values analysis, to learn more about how being involved within Hip hop dance communities positively relates to adolescent development. Adolescence was defined herein as ages 13-23. The study investigated Hip hop dance communities in terms of cultural expertise (i.e. novice, intermediate and advanced/expert) to look specifically at dance narratives (i.e. peak experience narratives and “I dance because” essays) and hip hop dance performances. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to (1) explore how adolescents use multimodal Hip hop dance discourse for social-emotional development and critical consciousness, and to (2) understand how values …

Black Matter, Kahlil Irving

Graduate School of Art Theses

History as we know it, is inherited. Racism, fascism, white supremacy, and Eurocentric dominance have been presented as normal and acceptable within our society for many years. This has allowed police officers to execute Black American’s and not be acquitted for their horrendous crimes. As an activist I want to challenge the status quo. As an artist I am interested in investigating how I can present ideas embody or reflect contemporary issues and concerns. Using different colors can aggressively change how an object is perceived. Historical objects hold many important.

I explore many mediums, but an anchor material that I …

Fantastical Body Narratives : Cosplay, Performance, And Gender Diversity., Tiffany M. Hutabarat-Nelson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation aims to explore how the phenomenon of cosplay has been able to produce and sustain a diversity of gender expression due to its emergence from an activity-based community that emphasizes creative play. This creative energy is manifested through cosplay as an active, ritualized practice in which gender diversity is invited to be realized as a distinct possibility, resulting in a display of a full range of masculinities and femininities as well as crossplays and genderbend cosplays. I argue that cosplay can therefore be understood as a phenomenon that destabilizes the gender binary—its active practice promotes the production and …

Lacuna: Transcendence Of The Human Body Through The Space Between, Anica Bottom

Scholarly and Creative Works Conference (2015 - 2021)

Examination of humans as dancers interaction with our surrounding environment. Performance and experimental movement improvisation clips shown.