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Cover image of Being and Becoming Visible
Cover image of Being and Becoming Visible
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Being and Becoming Visible

Women, Performance, and Visual Culture

edited by Olga M. Mesropova and Stacey Weber-Fève

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Spanning geographical, cultural, and methodological boundaries, the essays in Being and Becoming Visible examine female representation in a variety of performative and visual media. Olga M. Mesropova and Stacey Weber-Fève situate the disciplines of visual culture and performance studies within two conceptual frameworks—multicultural and feminist—through the overarching thematic trope of visibility.

The contributors offer a mix of sociohistorical, ethnographic, ideological, postcolonial, and cultural approaches to the study of female representation in performance, visual, and consumer cultures...

Spanning geographical, cultural, and methodological boundaries, the essays in Being and Becoming Visible examine female representation in a variety of performative and visual media. Olga M. Mesropova and Stacey Weber-Fève situate the disciplines of visual culture and performance studies within two conceptual frameworks—multicultural and feminist—through the overarching thematic trope of visibility.

The contributors offer a mix of sociohistorical, ethnographic, ideological, postcolonial, and cultural approaches to the study of female representation in performance, visual, and consumer cultures. They examine curatorship, mythological representation of women, the interrelationship of mother and child, domestic gender roles, domestic abuse, and indigenous female representation. The volume includes case studies related to such diverse genres and media as theater, cinema, painting, television, performance activism, and photography from South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Instructors in feminist, cultural, and media studies who are looking for global perspectives will find that this fresh and provocative volume encourages students to see new connections among a variety of trends in contemporary scholarship.

Reviews

Reviews

This lucid and highly accessible 'exhibition' of essays attests to the productive cross-pollination between performance studies and visual culture and, more importantly, the ways that feminist scholars have shaped notions of visibility and visuality that animate the interdisciplinary terrain shared by these fields.

Highly recommended.

Being and Becoming Visible is a remarkable compilation of previously published articles that examine female representation from feminist perspectives in a variety of performative and visual media across geographical and disciplinary boundaries. The collection is a valuable text for use in courses that focus on visual culture, representation, gender identity, and the media.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
288
ISBN
9780801894947
Illustration Description
18 halftones
Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1. Feminist Exhibitionism: When the Women's Studies Professor Is a Curator
Part I: Spectators, Spectacles, and Cultural Icons
Chapter 2. Diana Doubled: The Fairytale Princess and

Introduction
Chapter 1. Feminist Exhibitionism: When the Women's Studies Professor Is a Curator
Part I: Spectators, Spectacles, and Cultural Icons
Chapter 2. Diana Doubled: The Fairytale Princess and the Photographer
Chapter 3. Alice Neel's Portraits of Mother Work
Chapter 4. Practical Perfection? The Nanny Negotiates Gender, Class, and Family Contradictions in 1960s Popular Culture
Chapter 5. Millions "Love Lucy": Commodification and the Lucy Phenomenon
Part II: Explicit Selves, Explicit Bodies
Chapter 6. Fractured Borders: Women's Cancer and Feminist Theater
Chapter 7. Representing Domestic Violence: Ambivalence and Difference in What's Love Got to Do with It
Chapter 8. The Missing Story of Ourselves: Poor Women, Power, and the Politics of Feminist Representation
Chapter 9. Fashion Photography and Women's Modernity in Weimar Germany: The Case of Yva
Part III: Iconographies of Communal Identity
Chapter 10. Iconographies of Gender, Poverty, and Power in Contemporary South African Visual Culture
Chapter 11. Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Gendered Collective Action: The Case of Women of the Storm Following Hurricane Katrina
Chapter 12. The Representation of the Indigenous Other in Daughters of the Dust and The Piano
List of Contributors

Author Bios