Performance Studies Commons^™

The Official Language Of Academic Debate, Marcus Paroske

National Forensic Journal

Academic debate continues to face the long term issue of how to reconcile competing philosophies of argument pedagogy and competitive practice, especially between adherents technical and civic debate theories. Using the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, this essay offers an analysis of this division, focusing on the role of dominant language formation and the role fluency plays in constituting power dynamic in the activity. The conception of a translation approach to judging is offered as a remedy for the exclusionary effects of technical language use in debate.

Biological Sex As A Predictor Of Competitive Success In Intercollegiate Forensics, Kiranjeet Dhillon, April Larson

National Forensic Journal

This study examines biological sex as a predictor of the level of success in intercollegiate policy debate, impromptu speaking, and extemporaneous speaking. Secondary data analysis of tabulation sheets from NDT, AFA-NIET, and NFA, revealed three findings. First, there are more male than female competitors in policy debate and males significantly experienced more out-round success than females. Second, there are more males than females in impromptu speaking; however, there was no significance between biological sex and success in out-rounds. Third, there are more male than female competitors in extemporaneous speaking and males significantly experienced more out-round success than females.

They Know What They're Doing But They Don't Know Why: A Theoretical Exploration Of Intertextuality In Interpretation Events, Megan Orcholski, Dan Cronn-Mills

National Forensic Journal

Our agenda is to offer a conceptual/theoretical understanding of the post-structural approach to literature interpretation/performance. We make a practice of the theory in the construction of the paper—we allow the text to speak for itself. We provide a juxtaposition numerous authors. We focus on the text rather than the author. We offer the following reading instructions: Please read the text as a whole and skimming the referential notations. The citations are provided for readers who wish to further the topic. We realize we depart from the traditional academic writing form. The common occurrence of the style in competition underscores the …

Reframing Competitive Critical Analyses: An Argument For Education-Application Based Methods For Speech Writing In Ca And Rhetorical Criticism, Katherine L. Hatfield-Edstrom

National Forensic Journal

This project offers a contemporary exemplar that students and coaches in competitive speech, specifically in the events of rhetorical criticism or communication analysis can use to help reframe traditional notions or methods of how to write a speech for competition. I contend that the event in competition has become too “cookie-cutter” and devoid of innovation or “thinking outside the box,” which can limit the educational experience for our students. Thus, this project begins as a full critical analysis employing the theoretical framework of public memory and follows with a discussion of how a student in competitive speech could approach the …

After Dinner Speaking: Problems, Causes, And Still No Solutions, Brandi Lawless

National Forensic Journal

Since its adoption as a competitive event, After Dinner Speaking has been critiqued and criticized by several scholars. Despite the quantity of literature produced on this topic, changes to the event have been minimal. This author chooses to look at four areas of controversy including: defining the event, differentiating After Dinner Speaking from Speech to Entertain, differentiating After Dinner Speaking from other platform events, and developing a judging standard for this event. With the use of humor, this paper not only examines these problems, but also the need for discussion surrounding the pedagogical goals of After Dinner Speaking as a …

Experiencing Samoa Through Stories: Myths And Legends Of A People And Place, Samantha Lichtenberg

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research will explore oral tradition, indigenous beliefs prior to Christianity, and the significance of place through the study of Samoan myths and legends. The researcher will investigate the tradition of storytelling by hearing the stories from Samoan elders themselves. These stories will be supplemented with details from secondary written resources in order to compile comprehensive versions of the myths and legends. The research will consider the affect that Christianity has on the meaning of the stories and examine whether traces of indigenous belief/religion are preserved today through storytelling and the remembrance of myths. The researcher will spend a significant …

The Angel And The Imp: The Duncan Sisters’ Performances Of Race And Gender, Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

From 1923 to 1959 Vivian and Rosetta Duncan performed the show Topsy and Eva in front of thousands of audiences in the United States and abroad. This essay examines how the Duncan Sisters’ appropriation of blackness through a yin and yang performance of black and white womanhood, their sexualized but ultimately infantilizing routine as young girls, and their take on anarchistic comedy resulted in a particular spin on age, gender, race, and sexuality that reinforced their privilege as white women even while it pushed the boundaries of acceptable femininity in the swiftly shifting American culture of the first half of …

Women & Language: Essays On Gendered Communication Across Media, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

The present volume of essays examines women's communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became "gossip girls" and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women's literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women's communication in the technology-rich 21st century. This excerpt features the introduction and one essay from the co-editor.

Women & Language: Essays On Gendered Communication Across Media, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

The present volume of essays examines women's communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became "gossip girls" and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women's literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women's communication in the technology-rich 21st century. This excerpt features the introduction and one essay from the co-editor.

Acting Virtuous: Chastity, Theatricality, And The Tragedie Of Mariam, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Given the interrelation of female chastity and female theatricality in early modem discourses, it comes as no surprise that both figure importantly in what is believed to be the first original English drama to be written by a woman. As Elizabeth Cary explores a Jewish queen 's sexual purity in The Tragedie of Mariam, she does so by concentrating on questions of performance. Cary's title character explicitly abjures theatricality even as she embraces chastity, creating a fissure in Renaissance discourses on women that threatens to swallow up the antifeminist idea that female chastity is always an act.

Circus: An Integrated Curriculum Unit, Institute For The Development Of Gifted Education, Ricks Center For Gifted Children, University Of Denver

Ricks Curriculum Units Series

An integrated curriculum is an instructional approach that connects the disciplines to an underlying theme or topic. Immersing students in an integrated-thematic unit provides the backdrop for experiences to occur across the disciplines. Shaping coursework around integrated themes is especially appropriate for gifted students, however using an integrated-thematic curriculum is appropriate for all learners as it develops students' abilities to make connections, to solve problems by looking at multiple perspectives, and to integrate information from different fields of experience. An integrated-thematic curriculum permits students to be active participants in their own learning as they design their own explorations and take …

Wow Cafe Theater Unveils 30th Anniversary Festival After Three Decades, Fierce Performers Prove The Show Will Go On, Esther Zinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

WOW Cafe Theater, a collective for female and and trans performance artists, strutted its stuff during its Pearl festival in May by celebrating thirty years of producing risk-taking, genre-defying theatre during the entire month of May 2010. Featuring more than twenty performances and fifty artists spanning a broad spectrum of music, dance, and multi-media, the Pearl festival was arguably the biggest and longest running theatrical event for women in New York during this summer, made possible by a generous grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

In The Wake, Lindsey Mantoan

Faculty Publications

Lindsey Mantoan reviews a performance of In the Wake (by Lisa Kron) for Theatre Journal.

Madre Patria (Mother Country): Latino Identity And Rejections Of Blackness, Marta I. Cruz-Janzen

Trotter Review

When I was in third grade, in Puerto Rico, I wanted to be the Virgin Mary for the community Christmas celebration. A teacher promptly informed me that the mother of Christ could not be black. A girl with blonde hair and blue eyes was selected for the role, and I was given the role of a shepherd. In middle school, also in Puerto Rico, I played a house servant for a school play. Only children of black heritage played the slaves and servants. A white student with a painted face portrayed the only significant black character. All the other characters …

Spectator To Actor To Multiplier: Edisca’S Humanizing Methodology, Hannah Mcdowell

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Augusto Boal, a Brazilian theater theorist and practitioner, transferred the means of production of theater to the oppressed. The oppressed, formally passive spectators filled by the elites’ images of the world, became liberated participants in the creation of dramatic action. Through “people’s theater,” Boal encouraged participants to critically analyze their relationships with the world and in the world through onstage action. EDISCA (Escola de Dança e Integração Social para Criança e Adolescente [School of Dance and Social Integration for Children and Adolescents]), located in Fortaleza, Brazil, introduces artistic languages to children and adolescents from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The youth then …

Adjusting The Margins: Building Bridges Between Deaf And Hearing Cultures Through Performance Arts, Luane Ruth Davis Haggerty

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study addresses a gap in scholarship on leadership styles in the Deaf community. There is an invisible style of leadership differing from the mainstream culture not previously addressed in the literature at any depth. My study is composed of three interlocking parts; the practice of anthropology: fieldwork, analysis, and presentation. The foundation for my fieldwork, is an "archeology of the structure of the perceived world" (Merleau-Ponty), using the holding environment of the rehearsal process and the structural process of an acting technique called Del-Sign. Del-Sign is a fusion acting style created by combining American Sign Language and the Delsarte …

¡Dame Un Ritmo (Y Sueldo)!: La Sustentabilidad Económica De Los Artistas Callejeros En El Gran Santiago, Zachariah Smith Cheema

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Street artists in the greater Santiago area are the product of a high unemployment rate and a history of street music in the city. Street artists can be found in every part of Santiago, from the shopping centers to the tranquil parks. Santiago’s street artists vary in age, talent, and future plans. However, these street artists confront many similar risks, such as the threat of detention, other street vendors, or the spectators themselves. While street art as a long-term job is a possibility, there is not a lot of room to save money for the future. Street art lacks support …

'Listen, Rama’S Wife!’: Maithil Women’S Perspectives And Practices In The Festival Of Sāmā-Cakevā, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

As a female-only festival in a significantly gender-segregated society, sāmā cakevā provides a window into Maithil women’s understandings of their society and the sacred, cultural subjectivities, moral frameworks, and projects of self-construction. The festival reminds us that to read male-female relations under patriarchal social formations as a dichotomy between the empowered and the disempowered ignores the porous boundaries between the two in which negotiations and tradeoffs create a symbiotic reliance. Specifically, the festival names two oppositional camps—the male world of law and the female world of relationships—and then creates a male character, the brother, who moves between the two, loyal …

“Legal Or Illegal? Documented Or Undocumented?” The Struggle Over Brookhaven’S Neighborhood Preservation Act, Jackson B. Miller

Faculty Publications

This critical essay applies the concept of “presence” as a theoretical lens for explaining the rhetorical efficacy of protest events surrounding a contemporary debate about immigrants’ rights in a suburban New York township. Specifically, the protests surrounding the town board meetings regarding Brookhaven’s “Neighborhood Preservation Act,” a piece of legislation geared toward making rental laws more stringent, are examined. A group comprised largely of white, upper middle-class citizens voiced their support for the proposed legislation, while a group of day laborers and those sympathetic with their cause characterized the proposed legislation as a form of racial discrimination disguised as a …

The Mind Museum: Rudolf Schwarzkogler And The Vienna Actionists, Philip Barnes

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Sixth paragraph]

In the following essay I discuss the Austrian artist Rudolf Schwarzkogler. I have enjoyed the process of ferreting out articles and references to him, although these are seemingly as scarce as his own artistic output. Schwarzkogler spent just 2 years staging performance-actions in his apartment in the 1960s. These methodically photographed scenes involved sliced fish, bandages, light bulbs, razor blades, foodstuffs and surgical apparatus, all manipulated by anonymous figures. The photographs, works of art in their own right, have since toured internationally. Schwarzkogler was the least outgoing of a group called the Viennese Actionists, whose orgiastic, bloody Happenings …

On Guillermo Gomez-Peña's El Mexterminator And Cyber Vato, Michael Benton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

While attending Bowling Green State University in 1997 I had an experience that changed my worldview. I was a teaching assistant in the Popular Culture department and part of my responsibilities included teaching Introduction to Popular Culture (POPC 100) and Introduction to Mass Media (POPC 165). I had been struggling to engage my students in examining the way in which social reality is represented to them through popular entertainments [2]. The majority of my students were white, middle class students from the surrounding Northern regions of Ohio. My students were well-versed in the ongoing controversy over whether or …

Remembering Beyond The Self: Crossing Borders 2001, Jill Dolan

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

In a passionate keynote address at the third in CLAGS's series of "Crossing Borders" conferences, Cherríe Moraga called on conference participants to "hold the pussy in public," to join otherwise isolated Latina/o artists in bringing racialized queerness into public debate. Presented at the University of Texas at Austin in February, "Crossing Borders 2001: U.S. Latina/o Queer Performance" was linked by its coalitional politics around race and ethnicity—broadly figured as latinidad—and gender and sexuality. This three-day gathering was sponsored by CLAGS through a generous gift from the Michael C.P. Ryan Estate and co-sponsored by the Center for Dramatic and Performance Studies …

Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard's Review Of John Kneubuhl's Think Of A Garden And Other Plays, Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Marta Rohatynskyj's Review Of Advertising Missionaries And Pacific Passages, Marta Rohatynskyj

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Contributors: Vol 22 No. 2, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Contributors list of Vol. 22 (1999): Pacific Studies Full Issue 2

Books Received And Book Notices, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Book Listing for the Vol 22, No 2 Edition of the Pacific Studies Journal

Vol. 22 No. 2 (1999): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

Toward Historizing Gender In Polynesia: On Vilsoni Hereniko’S Woven Gods And Regional Patterns, Jeannette Marie Mageo

Pacific Studies

This article considers possible parallels between Rotuman and Samoan gender history through Vilsoni Hereniko’s book Woven Gods. Hereniko draws upon the work of Victor Turner to analyze his Rotuman data, arguing that wedding clowns reverse normative social structures. Wedding clowns are expert female practitioners of Rotuman joking discourse. This discourse is not only ritualized on special occasions but is also an everyday informal discourse and, I argue, is in this sense normative; it counterbalances respect discourse, which is likewise practiced in ritual (ceremonial) contexts but also in everyday polite contexts. In the Samoan precolonial sex-gender system, males and females had …

“Indians,” “Braves,” And “Redskins”: A Performative Struggle For Control Of An Image, Jackson B. Miller

Faculty Publications

Native American groups across the country have been protesting the use of their symbols and heritage in sports arenas for over a decade. Yet, particularly in the realm of professional sports, these protests have not generated significant changes in attitudes and practices. This critical essay examines several Native American protest events to reveal the factors contributing to the failure of the reform movement and to suggest some strategies for rhetorically reformulating the campaign.

The July Festival In The Marquesas Islands: “Youth” And Identity In A Valley Community, Mary Martini

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.