New Books in Performing Arts
Episodes
Shana Redmond, "Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson" (Duke UP, 2020)
23 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (Duke University Press, 2020), Shana Redmond explores the ways in which Paul Robeson, silence...
Clifford Mason, "Macbeth in Harlem: Black Theater in America from the Beginning to Raisin in the Sun" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
22 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Macbeth in Harlem: Black Theater in America from the Beginning to Raisin in the Sun (Rutgers University Press, 2020) by Clifford Mason, celebrated act...
Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020)
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for S...
Ian Burrows, "Shakespeare for Snowflakes: On Slapstick and Sympathy" (Zero Books, 2020)
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Shakespeare for Snowflakes: On Slapstick and Sympathy (Zero Books, 2020), Ian Burrows examines the fraught meeting place of slapstick and tragedy, ...
Steve Zeitlin, "The Poetry of Everyday Life: Storytelling and the Art of Awareness" (Cornell UP, 2016)
25 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is a book of encounters. Part memoir, part essay, and partly a guide to maximizing your capacity for fulfillment and expression, The Poetry of Ev...
Caridad Svich, "The Hour of All Things and Other Plays" (Intellect Books, 2018)
20 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Hour of All Things and Other Plays (Intellect Books, 2018) collects four plays by Caridad Svich, a 2012 OBIE for Lifetime Achievement playwright. ...
Stacy Wolf, "Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America" (Oxford UP, 2019)
18 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews Stacy Wolf of Princeton University about her book Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Music...
Melissa R. Klapper, "Ballet Class: An American History" (Oxford UP, 2020)
12 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For much of the last century, ballet class has been a rite of passage for millions of little girls in the United States. Some of these students have g...
Lana Lesley, "Rude Mechs’ Lipstick Traces" (53rd State, 2019)
11 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Rude Mechs’ Lipstick Traces (53rd State Press, 2019) is Lana Lesley’s graphic novelization of Lipstick Traces by Austin-based theatre collective R...
Sean F. Edgecomb, "Charles Ludlam Lives!" (U Michigan, 2017)
08 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Playwright, actor, and director Charles Ludlam (1943-87) helped to galvanize the Ridiculous style of theater in New York City starting in the 1960s. D...
Katie Horowitz, "Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness" (Routledge, 2019)
01 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Published by Routledge in 2019, Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness is a comparative ethnography of drag king and drag queen perfor...
James Shapiro, "Shakespeare in a Divided America" (Penguin, 2020)
29 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future (Penguin, 2020) renowned Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro turns...
Shay Welch, "The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
29 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System: Dancing with Native American Epistemology (Palgrave Macmillian, 2019), Shay Welch investigate...
Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019)
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. B...
Caspar Melville, "It's a London Thing: How Rare Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City" (Manchester UP, 2019)
24 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How does music help us to understand the contemporary city? In It's a London Thing: How Rare Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City (Manchest...
Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, "Stages: On Dying, Working, and Feeling" (Thick Press, 2020)
23 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Can care be enacted through art? Inside a cathedral, staff members from a nursing home work with an artist to perform a poetic text about caregiving, ...
Jacki Apple, "Performance / Media / Art / Culture: Selected Essays 1983-2018" (Intellect Books, 2019)
23 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Performance / Media / Art / Culture: Selected Essays 1983-2018 (Intellect Books, 2019) collects more than thirty years of critical writing by artist a...
Christopher Bayes, "Discovering the Clown, or The Funny Book of Good Acting" (TCG, 2019)
17 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Discovering the Clown, or The Funny Book of Good Acting (TCG, 2019) Christopher Bayes (Head of Physical Acting at the Yale School of Drama) introdu...
Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat....
Tobie Stein, "Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Performing Arts Workforce" (Routledge, 2020)
27 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Has can theatre confront racial inequality? In Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Performing Arts Workforce (Routledge, 2020), Tobie S. Stein, Profes...
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
25 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Philli...
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. How...
Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)
03 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, i...
Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing
03 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trad...
J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude t...
Jennifer C. Lena, "Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts" ( Princeton UP, 2019)
29 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How did American elites change the meaning of Art? In Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts (Princeton University Press, 2019)...
Shelby Wynn Schwartz, "The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and Their Afterlives" (U Michigan Press, 2019)
16 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Selby Wynn Schwartz writes about gender, performance, and the politics of embodiment. Her articles have been published in Women & Performance, PAJ, Da...
Harshita M. Kamath, "The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance" (U California Press, 2019)
08 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Harshita M. Kamath's new book The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance (University of California Press, 2019) features an investigati...
Emily Wilcox, "Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy" (U California Press, 2018)
18 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What is “Chinese dance,” how did it take shape in during China’s socialist period, and how has this socialist form continued to influence Post-M...
David V. Mason, "The Performative Ground of Religion and Theatre" (Routledge, 2018)
17 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
To what extent may we say that religion is a theatrical phenomenon, and that theatre is a religious experience? Can making sense of one help us make s...
Jules Evans, "The Art of Losing Control: A Philosopher's Search for Ecstatic Experience" (Canongate Books, 2017)
28 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
People have always sought ecstatic experiences - moments where they go beyond their ordinary self and feel connected to something greater than them. S...
Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing
19 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more de...
Bernadete Barton, "Stripped: More Stories from Exotic Dancers" (NYU Press, 2017)
28 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Women get into stripping for money, writes Dr. Bernadete Barton, and the experience the girls have throughout their career in exotic dancing varies. D...
Victoria Fortuna, "Moving Otherwise: Dance, Violence and Memory in Buenos Aires" (Oxford UP, 2018)
28 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Victoria Fortuna's new book Moving Otherwise: Dance, Violence and Memory in Buenos Aires (Oxford University Press, 2018) examines the different ways i...
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017)
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of Gener...
Halifu Osumare, “Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir” (UP of Florida, 2018)
04 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Combining memoir with auto-ethnography, historical study and sociocultural analysis, Halifu Osumare draws on her decades of experience to explore the ...
Marc Hertzman, “Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil” (Duke UP, 2013)
19 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil (Duke University Press, 2013), Marc Hertzman revisits the history of Brazil’s quintessent...
miriam cooke, “Dancing in Damascus: Creativity, Resilience, and the Syrian Revolution” (Routledge, 2017)
02 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Syrian Revolution, which began in March 2011, has since resulted in what can be described as a civil war, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of p...
Edward Ross Dickinson, “Dancing in the Blood” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
29 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Dancing in the Blood: Modern Dance and European Culture on the Eve of the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Edward ...
Mark Fleischman, “Inside Studio 54” (Rare Bird Books, 2017)
08 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Studio 54 opened its doors 40 years ago and since that time it has held a place in American popular culture. Studio 54 was the place to go dancing to ...
Julia Fawcett, “Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801” (U. Michigan Press, 2016)
09 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
“How can the modern individual maintain control over his or her self-representation when the whole world seems to be watching?” This is the questi...
Joanna Dee Das, “Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora” (Oxford UP, 2017)
07 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine D...
Dana Mills, “Dance and Politics: Moving Beyond Boundaries” (Manchester University Press, 2017)
10 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Dance & Politics: Moving Beyond Boundaries (Manchester University Press, 2017) by Dana Mills, considers dance as a political expression from a number ...
Carrie J. Preston, “Learning to Kneel: Noh, Modernism, and Journeys in Teaching” (Columbia UP, 2016)
29 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Carrie J. Preston‘s new book tells the story of the global circulation of noh-inspired performances, paying careful attention to the ways these perf...
Anthea Kraut, “Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance” (Oxford UP, 2015)
23 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Is it possible to lay claim to ownership of a dance? Is choreography intellectual property? How have shifting conceptions of race and gender shaped th...
James Nott, “Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918-1960” (Oxford UP, 2016)
02 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918-1960 (Oxford University Press, 2016), c...
Clare Croft, “Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange” (Oxford UP, 2015)
27 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What’s missing from our understanding of the role of dancers in the context of American Cultural Diplomacy? Clare Croft‘s first book, Dancers as D...
Bill T. Jones, “Story/Time: The Life of An Idea” (Princeton UP, 2014)
17 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
When does a dance become a book? How does choreography lend itself to the page? What discontents exist in theorizing performance that are best explore...
Wendy Oliver and Lindsay Guarino, eds., “Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches” (University Press of Florida, 2014)
10 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Contested and complicated histories create the best books. This is true for many volumes and is certainly so for Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots an...
Sherrie Tucker, “Dance Floor Democracy: The Social Geography of Memory at the Hollywood Canteen” (Duke UP, 2014)
19 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Cultural memory of World War II frequently draws on swing music and the USO dance floor as symbols of how the country came together in support of the ...
Rebecca Rossen, “Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance” (Oxford UP, 2014)
13 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
How does an author craft a work that speaks across the boundaries of dance studies, Jewish studies and gender studies? What does it mean for dance to ...
Caitlin McDonald and Barbara Sellers-Young, eds., “Belly Dance Around the World” (McFarland, 2013)
19 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When you think about research that contributes to understanding others (or maybe even yourself more), dance is not often the first thought that comes ...
Joshua Legg, “Introduction to Modern Dance Techniques” (Princeton Book Company, 2011)
27 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
I can still remember being an undergraduate student, going from dance class to dance class and working as hard as I could each day. In the midst of al...
Alexis Wilson, “Not So Black and White” (Tree Spirit Publishing, 2012)
03 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
When I think of the name “Billy Wilson” certain things come to mind immediately. I think of his sparkling career as director and choreographer of ...
Yael Tamar Lewin, “Night’s Dancer: The Life of Janet Collins” (Wesleyan UP, 2011)
11 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean for a contemporary scholar to be trusted with the unfinished autobiography of a dance legend? How does one ensure that the integrity...
Peggy Schwartz and Murray Schwartz, “The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus” (Yale UP, 2012)
02 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
For some time now I’ve been in spaces with dancers and dance scholars who lament the amount of available research on some of the black luminaries in...
Brenda Dixon Gottschild, “Joan Myers Brown and the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina: A Biohistory of American Performance” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011)
29 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
For the launch of the Dance Channel, I thought long and hard about what the first author interview would be. I felt that it was critically important t...
Andrew Field, “Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919-1954” (The Chinese University Press, 2010)
07 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
“To think of Shanghai is to think of its nightlife: the two are synonymous.” From here, Andrew Field takes us on a dance across modern Chinese hi...
Peter Filichia, “Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hit and the Biggest Flop of the Season 1959-2009” (Applause, 2010)
27 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Speaking to long time theater critic Peter Filichia, one is reminded of listening to an old-time sportwriter talk about baseball. The Broadway he desc...
George Hunka, “Word Made Flesh: Philosophy, Eros, and Contemporary Tragic Drama” (Eyecorner Press, 2011)
01 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
George Hunka’s book Word Made Flesh: Philosophy, Eros, and Contemporary Tragic Drama (Eyecorner Press, 2011) offers a series of challenges, provocat...
Martin Denton, “Plays and Playwrights 2011” (NYTE, 2011)
20 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
The world of “Off-Off Broadway” has been fertile soil for new American plays for decades. Since the late 1990s, one of its most fervent boosters a...
Pamela Cobrin, “From Winning the Vote to Directing on Broadway: The Emergence of Women on the New York Stage” (Delaware, 2009)
06 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Pamela Cobrin‘s book From Winning the Vote to Directing on Broadway: The Emergence of Women on the New York Stage, 1880-1927 (University of Delawar...