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This book provides an overview of the full range of the teaching and practice of Committed Theatre and theatre of commitment in Nigeria for scholars in the arts and cultural studies. It is divided into four sections; Chapter 1: Theatre in Development Discourse, which is comprised of four papers that explore the theories of practice of theatre of commitment. Chapter 2 : Nigerian Theatre in Perspective discusses the trends, ethos of revolution, theatrical elements and communalistic/individualistic tendencies and the taboos theatre, drama and traditional theatre in Nigeria. In Chapter 3, the social, cultural and historical implications of Nigeria theatre, is examined in papers that focus on pol...
This book is the first definitive publication on Tunde Kelani, and represents a mine of divergent scholarly approaches to understanding his authorial power. A collection of articles on the cinematic oeuvre of one of the important and finest filmmakers in Africa, it addresses diverse areas that are crucial to Kelani’s filmic corpus and African cinema. Contributors articulate Kelani’s visual crafts in detail, while providing explications on significant markers. The book offers an understanding of how Kelani’s works represent the African worldview, science, demonstrative law, politics, gender, popular culture, canonized culture and history.
Global Perspectives on Nationalism takes an interdisciplinary approach informed by recent theorisations of nationalism to examine perennial questions on the topic. The idea of nationalism centres on questions of ethnicity, culture, religion, language, and access to resources. What determines consciousness of nationalism? How is nationalism manifested, shaped, or countered through literary and cultural productions? The contributors highlight topical areas in studies of nationalism including ecology, natural resources, sustainability, globalisation, the Anthropocene, postcolonialism, indigeneity, folklore, popular culture, and queer theory. They develop innovative perspectives on nationalism t...
Literature from the Peripheries: Refrigerated Culture and Pluralism is a collection of chapters dealing with multiple minority cultures from all over the world. The book examines the status of several less known cultures or cultural communities which exist in the peripheries of space and time. In addition to this, the arguments and the discourses running through chapters prove the need of cultural diversity and pluralism. This well-thought and critically written book is a clarion call for humanity to look over the shoulder and see the ghost of civilization receding farther away. The book will interest the readers, scholars, practitioners, and activists who like to explore several cultures and cultural conflicts.
A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Environmental Postcolonialism: A Literary Response is an academic investigation of the environmental repercussions of colonial destruction. This volume addresses the complex interplay between postcolonialism and environmental discourse through literature produced in the ex-colonies. This literature is read from the standpoint of ex-colonies within their human and non-human context. The primary objective of this volume is to scrutinize environmental concerns in the light of postcolonial theory, and so it examines works of art from the twin perspective of eco-criticism and postcolonialism which illuminates and underscores how colonizers destroyed and interfered with both nature and culture. Through discussing the intersecting layers of ecocriticism and postcolonial criticism, the volume gestures to new directions and generates a hopeful vision of a decolonized world.
Inspired by the new diversity of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in the twenty-first century, Hot Equations: Science, Fantasy, and the Radical Imagination on a Troubled Planet confronts the kinds of literary and political “realism” that continue to suppress the radical imagination. Alluding both to the ongoing climate catastrophe and to Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations”—that famous touchstone of “hard science fiction”—Hot Equations reads the crises of our "post-normal" moment via works that increasingly subvert genre containment and spill out into the public sphere. Drawing on archives and contemporary theory, author Jesse S. Cohn argues that these imaginative works of...
Staging 21st Century Tragedies: Theatre, Politics, and Global Crisis is an international collection of essays by leading academics, artists, writers, and curators examining ways in which the global tragedies of our century are being negotiated in current theatre practice. In exploring the tragic in the fields of history and theory of theatre, the book approaches crisis through an understanding of the existential and political aspect of the tragic condition. Using an interdisciplinary perspective, it showcases theatre texts and productions that enter the public sphere, manifesting notably participatory, immersive, and documentary modes of expression to form a theatre of modern tragedy. The co...
The aesthetic exception theorises anew the relation between art and politics. It challenges critical trends that discount the role of aesthetic autonomy, to impulsively reassert art as an effective form of social engagement. But it equally challenges those on the flipside of the efficacy debate, who insist that art’s politics is limited to a recondite space of ‘autonomous resistance’. The book shows how each side of the efficacy debate overlooks art’s exceptional status and its social mediations. Mobilising philosophy and cultural theory, and employing examples from visual art, performance, and theatre, it proposes four alternative tests to ‘effect’ to offer a nuanced account of art’s political character. Those tests examine how art relates to politics as a practice that articulates its historical conjuncture, and how it prefigures the ‘new’ through simulations capable of activating the political life of the spectator.
The Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts represents a truly multi-dimensional exploration of the inter-relationships between audiences and performance. This study considers audiences contextually and historically, through both qualitative and quantitative empirical research, and places them within appropriate philosophical and socio-cultural discourses. Ultimately, the collection marks the point where audiences have become central and essential not just to the act of performance itself but also to theatre, dance, opera, music and performance studies as academic disciplines. This Companion will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduates, as well as to theatre, dance, opera and music practitioners and performing arts organisations and stakeholders involved in educational activities.
From Thomas Edison''s first cinematic experiments to contemporary Hollywood blockbusters, Queer Images chronicles the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer sexualities over one hundred years of American film. The most up-to-date and comprehensive book of its kind, it explores not only the ever-changing images of queer characters onscreen, but also the work of queer filmmakers and the cultural histories of queer audiences. Queer Images surveys a wide variety of films, individuals, and subcultures, including the work of discreetly homosexual filmmakers during Hollywood''s Golden Age; classical Hollywood''s (failed) attempt to purge "sex perversion" from films; the development of ...