The SAGE Handbook of Performance Studies (review)

The Handbook is a comprehensive anthology presenting a wide variety of essays on many topics of interest to performance studies scholars. The contributors' list is a roll call of PS standard-bearers representing both the New York University and the Northwestern University cohorts from Rebecca Schneider, Barbara Browning, José Muñoz, Jill Dolan, and Jon McKenzie, to Dwight Conquergood, Nathan Stuckey, Shannon Jackson, Sandra L. Richards, Bruce Henderson, and Tracy C. Davis; and more. The Handbook is a bold attempt to bridge the supposed gap between the Northwestern University approach to performance studies and the New York University approach. As might be expected in a project of this kind, the essays taken as a whole deal with the broadest range of subjects-including Jackson's overview of performance studies as an academic discipline, Dolan on the tensions between theatre studies and performance studies, McKenzie on globalization, Conquergood and Browning each on performance ethnography, E. Patrick Johnson on "Black Performance Studies," Muñoz on queer performance, and Stuckey on fieldwork.

The Handbook is divided into six sections: "Performance Trouble," "Performing History," Performance Of and Beyond Literature," "Performance and Pedagogy," "Performance and Ethnography, and "Performance and Politics." This is a big book both in page length and scope but still lots more compact than the four volume anthology, Performance: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies edited by Philip Auslander (Routledge, 2004; $1070 cloth). The Handbook's selection of essays is excellent with the multiple approaches represented in the volume tightly intertwined. Overall, this is an excellent text for introductory courses in performance studies.