Contesting Performance: Global Sites of Research, edited by Jon McKenzie, Heike Roms, and C. J. W.-L. Wee (Palgrave McMillan, London 2010)

Abstract

n a student unit-of-study-experience questionnaire some years ago, in response to my introductory course in performance studies, a student remarked that the course’s focus upon the origins of the discipline itself was, in her words, ‘singular’ in her experience. Leaving aside the scope of her experience (which I am unable to assess), this student’s take on the syllabus gave me pause. The material to which he or she was responding included a review of Richard Schechner’s work with Victor Turner, framing a broader inquiry into the chiasmatic twining of anthropology and theatre studies, that being the fundamental interdisciplinary underpinning of Performance Studies as we teach it at my particular university.