Opening Acts

Judith Hamera received her B.A. (1980) in Mass Communication from Wayne State University and her M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1987) in Interpretation and Performance Studies respectively from Northwestern University. She is currently the Acting Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, and Professor of Communication Studies and Theatre Arts and Dance at California State University, Los Angeles. She has served as Editor of Text and Performance Quarterly, the journal of the National Communication Association Division of Performance Studies. Her publications have appeared in Cultural Studies, TDR: The Drama Review, Modern Drama, Text and Performance Quarterly, Theatre Topics, and Women and Language. She is the recipient of the National Communication Association's Lilla Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies, and was named President's Distinguished Professor at California State University in 2004. She is coeditor, with D. Soyini Madison, of the SAGE Handbook of Performance Studies.

Introduction: Opening Opening Acts - Judith Hamera Section 1: Engaging the Everyday Introduction - Judith Hamera 1. Becoming Other-Wise: Conversational Performance and the Politics of Experience - Leonard Clyde Hawes 2. Telling Twisted Tales: Owning Place, Owning Culture in Ethnographic Research - Bryant Keith Alexander Section 2: Animating Locations Introduction - Judtih Hamera 3. Bridging Haunted Places: Performance and the Production of Mostar - Sonja Arsham Kuftinec 4. Looking for Stonewall's Arm: Tourist Performance as Research Method - Michael S. Bowman Section 3: Interrogating Histories Introduction - Judith Hamera 5. Rethinking Elocution: The Trope of the Talking Book and Other Figures of Speech - Dwight Conquergood 6. Diverging Paths in Performance Genealogies - Ruth Laurion Bowman Section 4: Synthesizing Scholarship Introduction - Judith Hamera 7. The Mechanical Bride of Yonville-l'Abbaye (Batteries Not Included): Remapping the Canonical Landmark - Paul Edwards Section 5: Embracing Performances Introduction - Judith Hamera 8. Performing Theory/Embodied Writing - D. Soyini Madison About the Editor About the Contributors Index