Exceptional Spaces

Book excerpt: Taking interdisciplinary and diverse approaches, these thirteen essays explore the multifaceted relationship between performance and history. By considering performance as both a useful frame for understanding historical practices and a mode of historical production itself--performance in history and performance as history--the contributors chart new directions in such fields as cultural studies, contemporary historiography, museum studies, and life narrative research. Geographically and chronologically, the collection's sweep is broad--ranging from the nineteenth century to the present, from Victorian theater to commissions of inquiry in Kenya, from dissent in post-Soviet Lithuania to plantation tours in the American South. Together, the essays make up a work that is truly interdisciplinary in breadth and focus. By combining the methodologies of history and performance studies, the contributors illuminate the structure and function of cultural production in all its forms. The contributors are Michael S. Bowman, Ruth Laurion Bowman, Elizabeth Gray Buck, Kay Ellen Capo, David William Cohen, Tracy Davis, Kirk W. Fuoss, Shannon Jackson, D. Soyini Madison, Carol Mavor, E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, Della Pollock, Jeffrey H. Richards, and Joseph R. Roach.