Teaching Performance Studies, and: Performance Studies (review)

As a discipline and method of analysis, "performance studies" stands as one of the most heterogeneous and, in many circumstances, contested terms in academia. In his recently published textbook, Performance Studies: An Introduction, Richard Schechner takes note of this variegated form when he writes, "[t]here is no finality to performance studies, either theoretically or operationally. There are many voices, opinions, methods, and subjects" (1). Suffice it to say, then, the openness and diverse character of the field of performance studies makes it slippery as both a term and concept, and exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to define conclusively or to historicize in a manner universally accepted. While some in the academy have found the borderless nature and fluid quality unusual, off-putting and, in some cases, troubling, others have embraced it enthusiastically and, in turn, revel in the freedom and possibilities afforded by such a wide open field of play. The editors and contributors of the two recently published anthologies reviewed here are in harmony with Schechner's statement celebrating the multiplicity of procedures and practices within performance studies. Stucky, Wimmer, and Striff have sought less to offer totalizing dictums and unproblematic narratives than to provide idiosyncratic snapshots of the field as it exists and operates today.

Stucky and Wimmer's Teaching Performance Studies includes eighteen essays authored by an impressive cross section of junior and senior scholars and educators from a variety of disciplines within the humanities and the social sciences. Focusing on the challenges and capacities of their own demonstrated pedagogies, all of the contributors consider how their theories and/or methods of classroom management and instruction are informed and formed by performance studies practices. To their credit, Stucky and Wimmer endeavor neither to blend nor resolve existing discrepancies operating between these varied approaches, nor to offer a cohesive and singular performance studies pedagogy. Rather, the included approaches are presented as strategies that have proven effective and useful in a variety of academic and nonacademic instructional contexts, and, moreover, may well prove useful to others who find themselves in circumstances wherein the norms of traditional instruction falter and fail.

Following a brief and affirming foreword by Schechner—wherein performance studies, "an elusive, playful, embodied, multifaceted, protean operation" (ix), is positioned as a particularly fertile ground for pedagogical advance—Stucky and Wimmer offer a lucid and cogent introduction entitled "The Power of Transformation in Performance Studies Pedagogy." Within this essay the editors discuss the so-called "performative turn" and, by extension, the advent and effect of performance studies in the academy. Sequentially, they locate this trend within the larger history of educational theory and practice, and by turns they identify three thematic threads as central and defining characteristics or modes of action within performance studies pedagogy: embodiment, eth-nography, and play. Throughout the essay, Stucky and Wimmer argue convincingly that performance studies "offers unique ways of engendering change" in that it "participates in the ongoing redefinition of cultural, social, and educational practices" (1, 2). Over and over again, this activist tone promoting social change effectively underscores many of the essays that follow.

The balance of the anthology is divided into three parts: "Positioning Performance Studies," "Embodiment and Epistemology," and "Negotiating Borders." While I found the entire study generally convincing and sound—barring the very few essays that though not without value were nonetheless repetitious and not equal to the greater part of entries—the whole of part two was exceptionally strong. Broadly speaking, the seven essays that comprise this section explicate methods and theories of instruction that focus on the shape and scope of learning that occurs through embodiment. Highlights from this section are Judith Hamera's "Performance Studies, Pedagogy, and Bodies in the Classroom," Phillip Zarrilli's "Action, Structure, Task and Emotion," and Joni Jones's "Teaching in the Borderlands." In the first of these three exceptional essays, Hamera...