Gender and Performance

Coined by Harley Granville Barker, the term ‘boy-actress’ describes young male actors, probably aged between 10 and 22 years, who appeared in women's roles on the early modern stage of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. These boys, their techniques, and their cultural meanings have recently become the subjects of heated critical debate. In our time as in their own, the impact of their onstage cross-dressing on their gender identities and on the sexual desires of their spectators has proved particularly controversial. This essay outlines key early modern sources for our knowledge of the boy-actress before considering the conflicting ways in which scholars have interpreted this evidence. Critical debates about the early modern boy-actress may have as much to teach us about our own era's constructions of gender, sexuality and performance as about the realities of the Shakespearean stage.

An extended conversation hosted by Amy Russell with fellow guides of Embodied Poetics : Kamili Okweni Feelings; Aurelian Koch; Lazlo Pearlman; Norman Taylor; Ed Woodall; Jonathan Young

This is an extended conversation about a shared project of canonical intervention, the new London-based training organization, Embodied Poetics, specializing in the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq, Jacques Copeau and Suzanne Bing”. Seven pedagogues, all of whom have completed a two-year, Lecoq-based pedagogy, and hold a significantly different embodied positions vis-à-vis each other, discuss their pedagogic practices, invoking notions of physical and dramatic neutrality, aesthetic permanence, archetypes of gender and character, and a eurocentric map of theatrical territories.

This essay asks how the boy players of the early modern English public stage and the aristocratic female performers of the early modern English court masque might have considered, and perhaps even affected, one another’s arts. Neither an aristocratic lady dancing in a masque nor a boy performing the role of such a lady on the public stage could have afforded to lose sight of the codes of elegant feminine behavior. Is it possible, then, that women’s and boys’ portrayals of elite femininity employed similar theatrical tactics? This essay proposes one methodology by which we might tease out potential relationships between boys’ and women’s performances. It begins by considering the conceptions of boy players and noble ladies inscribed in the texts of Ben Jonson’s Masque of Queens (1609) and Love Restored (1612), comparing them to the scandalous behavior of Frances and Catherine Howard at the end of the latter masque’s performance. It goes on to suggest that these contexts may help us better to imagine how the boy who first played the eponymous heroine of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (c.1612-13) portrayed her noble yet transgressive femininity. Such a comparison between the verbal and physical rhetoric of masques and those of public theater dramas may allow us to glimpse shared codes of class and gender embodiment across a range of performance cultures.

Japanese contemporary culture, including fashion, has increasingly gained popularity outside Japan, making it a timely topic for both scholarly and wider publics. Most current studies of popular culture focuses on manga, anime, and other such forms of visual culture, and dress and design studies are also emerging as a rapidly growing field. Building on the works of McVeigh (2000), Miller (2006), Slade (2010) and Steele (2010), this book addresses this new interest in an innovative fashion, expanding the significance of dress and delving into a wide range of examples from films, magazines, music videos and literature. By connecting diverse topic areas including dress, gender, media and cultural studies, Japanese Fashion Cultures analyzes the relationship of fashion aesthetics and gender identity within an increasingly interconnected, transnational world.
The book pays particular attention to the relationship of past and present. It examines contemporary Japanese fashion trends that adopt and restyle European historical clothing forms: the Edwardian dandy style, Victorian little girls’ dresses, and the Rococo and Romantic dress typical of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Japanese fashion culture actively promoted European clothing styles both politically and aesthetically, particularly since the country’s re-engagement with Euro-America in 1868. Throughout this book, I refer to the theory of “format” and “product” articulated by cultural sociologist Keiko Okamura (2003) where a cultural form, in this case Euro-American clothing styles, can be seen as a “format” when accepted globally. This standardized “format” becomes a carrier of the locality of cultures, allowing its “local” characteristics to be visible, measurable, and comparable with that of other cultures. Through this theoretical idea, I explain complex cultural theory using compelling examples. For instance, differences in preferred modes of masculinity and fashionability in Japan and Euro-America will be explained via garments and advertisement campaigns of Dolce and Gabbana. This process will therefore reveal the characteristics both universal and culturally specific to the Japanese context, including the ways in which Japanese men and women engage with fashion today. This poses a challenge to a widely held, often Eurocentric notion that Japanese men and women simply desire to imitate their Euro-American counterparts.

Japanese Fashion Cultures provides comprehensive insights into representations of clothes and gender in a society still poorly understood by outsiders. I dispel the popular misconception that Japan approves of gender inequalities and that women still occupy inferior social positions to men, expressed also in clothing. I argue that using the lens of fashion reveals the complexities of gender relations in Japan. Four contemporary case studies position the argument: young men’s fashion magazines, female performers’ use of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” in music video, “Lolita” fashion and Tetsuya Nakashima’s film Shimotsuma monogatari (Kamikaze Girls, 2004), and the continuing remarking of “Ivy-League” style in Japan. These four examples are notable for their adoption of historic European and American clothing forms. Their relatively “mainstream” stature in contemporary Japanese culture comes with a “twist” or unconventional characteristics. The “mainstream” standing of these types of popular culture indicates their reach, consumed by a great number of individuals within Japan. Certain qualities they manifest, on the other hand, impose a subtle, almost “delicate” kind of revolt against a set of idées fixes surrounding the relationship between clothes and gender. Using media and cultural texts as a primary source for discussion enables consideration of these complex links between distortion and reality. As Diana Crane (1990) has argued, both are parts of the “real” world where these case studies are first produced.

The first important issue this book raises is that, through negotiating male readers’ desire to attract admirers and to dress for their own pleasure, young men’s fashion magazines endorse the idea that crafting a pleasant look is the foundation of self-assurance and a successful life. Secondly, I show that female Japanese singers allow an accentuation of femininity without necessarily sexualization through the use of Japanese cute (kawaii) aesthetics. The third possibility this book explores is that highly decorative styles of Japanese Lolita fashion should not be read as symbolic of restriction and passivity. The fourth point this book addresses is that, as illustrated by the Japanese embrace of the “Ivy style,” both men and women engage with fashion in very similar ways. This is a major point of difference with the role of fashion historically in Euro-America.

These readings offer novel ways to understand the relationship between gender and dress, which is often blamed for maintaining repressive distinctions between “man” and “woman” in contemporary culture. Ultimately, this book aims to show that the Japanese appropriation of European clothing forms shows that there might be different, and hence less rigid approaches to understanding the relationship between fashion and gender. Japanese refashioning of European clothing concepts, this book argues, offers a compelling case for the implication of the aesthetics of fashion, gender, and cross-culturalism.

“Masafumi Monden's book is a gem. By bringing together and exploring colourful examples from Japan's vibrant street culture and fashion, he artfully demonstrates just how individualistic, innovative, and original the Japanese are. He also dismantles myths and misperceptions about gender relations, sexuality, and social relations in Japan.” –  Brian J. McVeigh, University of Arizona, USA,

“Monden provides a rich and detailed examination of the subtle intricacies of gendering and sexuality in contemporary Japanese fashion. While exploring the extremes of Tokyo street fashion he is able to illuminate some of the mechanism behind the perplexingly divergent ways to be a man or a woman in today's Japan.” –  Toby Slade, University of Tokyo, Japan,

“Masafumi Monden's fascinating and important book, Japanese Fashion Cultures, will be of great interest to everyone interested in fashion, gender, globalization, and youth culture. His research on young Japanese men and their attitudes towards fashion is especially significant, as it calls into question persistent stereotypes about how men and women are assumed to engage with fashion.” –  Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator, The Museum at FIT, New York City, USA

“From the possibility of subversion in lace-trimmed Lolita outfits and petite pinafores straight out of Alice in Wonderland, to the enchantments of Milkboy dandyism, Masafumi Monden's Japanese Fashion Cultures offers up a delightful combination of case studies that reveal the very best thinking in fashion theory today.” –  Laura Miller, Eiichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of Anthropology, University of Missouri–St. Louis, USA

"Masafumi Monden’s Japanese Fashion Cultures shines a spotlight on many of the looks that brought the world’s attention to an island nation which, like Britain, has consistently punched above its weight in matters of dress and appearance...In Japanese Fashion Cultures you have some most interesting comments about gender and I for one have learned a lot about the less reported (in the West at least) looks for young Japanese males." - Ted Polheums, Author of Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk

This chapter will provide a linguistic analysis of the representation of women in the lyrics of the 1980s glam metal band, Mötley Crüe. An analysis of the band's discography gives insight into the roles and characteristics typically accorded to women, shedding light on their perceived role during this time in music history. The way in which male glam metal bands expressed and performed gender could best be described as controversial, even oxymoronic. The machismo and misogyny expressed in most glam bands' lyrics contrast heavily with the performers' feminine appearance and vocals. It has been argued that by appropriating traditionally feminine characteristics, male glam metal bands prove that gender is something that is performed, thus liberating women by subverting traditional norms on gender appearance and behaviour (Sollee 2011; Simon 2014, 59). On the other hand, the intense sexism and misogyny of many glam lyrics, and the actions of artists on and off stage, can be interpreted as precisely the opposite. By appropriating through performance what is socially perceived as feminine behaviours and attributes, while simultaneously behaving in a traditionally macho way, male glam rock artists ended up by occupying all possible roles in the genre, leaving little or no space available for women on the stage and in the music itself.

This essay which is the Introduction to a co-edited volume argues that a vibrant female-oriented poetics is discernible across a variety of regions across India, a poetics whose political richness is often overlooked in theorizations of gender. I highlight various female voices to reveal the source and power of this poetic: unnamed female narrators of nineteenth century folktale collections, anonymous Telugu cradle songs that affirm femininity, and the natal songs of an itinerant female street singer. I argue that all these women’s voices demonstrate the remarkable crisscrossing ways in which women in India arrive at self-understanding. In this
process, the gendered sharing of experience overcomes divergences of class, caste, region, religion and historical time.

Mathematics skills are key factors for success in business studies, and for access to business degrees. It is important, therefore, to understand the determinants of mathematics scores among business students. The aim of our study was to identify factors that can explain mathematics performance among a cohort of business school students in Norway. This paper used a linear regression to quantify statistical associations between mathematics performance and the following independent variables: gender, grade point average (GPA) from upper secondary school, background in mathematics education, Big Five personality traits, and attitudes towards mathematics (ATM). Two factorsmathematics background, and self-confidence in mathematicswere positively associated with performance, though the significant effect of mathematics background disappeared after controlling for ATM. Given the importance of mathematics for success 24 in business studies, we recommend that efforts are made to improve students' confidence in this topic.

4._ Πειραιάς, μια Άλλη πόλη: Ευαίσθητη ισορροπία και ένταση στους δρόμους της νουβέλας της Νικόλ Ρούσσου Πες στη Μορφίνη ακόμα την ψάχνω 4.1 Όψεις του μεταπολιτευτικού άστεως Αλλαγή σκηνικού, αλλαγή εποχής. Από τη μεσοπολεμική και μετεμφυλιακή πόλη, μεταφερόμαστε πλέον στο μεταπολιτευτικό άστυ, στο σύγχρονο μετανεωτερικό τοπίο των μεγάλων αστικών κέντρων, όπως αυτό διαμορφώνεται τις δύο τελευταίες δεκαετίες του 20 ου αιώνα. Στο χρονικό διάστημα που έχει μεσολαβήσει, έχουν βέβαια συντελεστεί μεγάλες αλλαγές τόσο στο αστικό τοπίο, όσο και στον κοινωνικό χώρο. Η εντονότατη 107 | 123 Σύνοψη αυτών των στοιχείων καθώς και ιστορική ανασκόπηση των ιστορικών ανακατατάξεων που λαμβάνουν χώρα στον ευρωπαϊκό αστικό χώρο μετά τον Β΄Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο, μπορεί κανείς να αναζητήσει στο Guy Burgel, Η σύγχρονη ευρωπαϊκή πόλη: Από τον Β΄Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο έως σήμερα, μτφρ. Μαρία Παπαηλιάδη, Πλέθρον, Αθήνα 2007 4._ Πειραιάς, μια Άλλη πόλη: Ευαίσθητη ισορροπία και ένταση στους δρόμους της νουβέλας της Νικόλ Ρούσσου Πες στη Μορφίνη ακόμα την ψάχνω 108 | Παράλληλα με αυτές τις επαναδιατάξεις, συστήνονται και νέες πολιτικές ταυτότητας, οι οποίες θα επαναδιαμορφωθούν για να συμπεριλάβουν τις νέες νοηματοδοτήσεις του αστικού υποκειμένου, αρχής γενομένης από τη δεκαετία του ̕80 και ακόμη εντονότερα τα επόμενα χρόνια. Η είσοδος της Ελλάδας στην Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση το 1981 και η άνοδος του ΠΑΣΟΚ στην εξουσία την ίδια χρονιά, μεταβάλλουν άρδην το πολιτικό σκηνικό, αποτελώντας την απαρχή για τη θεμελίωση νέων θεσμών, που θα επηρεάσουν την κοινωνία και για τα επόμενα χρόνια, φέρνοντας στο προσκήνιο το επιτακτικό αίτημα χάραξης της κατάλληλης πολιτικής που να οδηγεί στην άρση παντός είδους διακρίσεων. Ιδιαίτερα σε ό,τι αφορά την περίπτωση των γυναικών, σημαντικό ρόλο έχουν διαδραματίσει οι κατακτήσεις της δεκαετίας του ̕70, εποχή έντονης πολιτικοποίησης και νεανικών, αντιστασιακών κινημάτων εντός των ακαδημαϊκών ιδρυμάτων, που ωθούν όσες γυναίκες έδρασαν σε αυτούς τους χώρους, προς μεγαλύτερες διεκδικήσεις για να διακηρύξουν τη χειραφέτησή τους. Η αγωνιστική διάθεση δεν θα χάσει τη δυναμική της και αργότερα, όταν πλέον υπάρχει μια έκρηξη ενδιαφέροντος γύρω από τα δικαιώματα των γυναικών, η οποία θα οδηγήσει σε νέες πολιτικές ισότητας, σε σωρεία κυκλοφορίας φεμινιστικών περιοδικών, καθώς και στη συγκρότηση γυναικείων ομάδων κ.ο.κ. 124 Οι δεκαετίες του 1980 και του 1990 είναι αυτές που σηματοδοτούν τη μετάβαση από τα σπάργανα του δεύτερου κύματος φεμινισμού, -αυτού δηλαδή του κινήματος που μάχεται εναντίον του έντονου σεξισμού της ανδροκρατούμενης κοινωνίας και αιτείται τη σεξουαλική απελευθέρωση-στο θεσμοθετημένο φεμινισμό, όπου ο κρατικός μηχανισμός αναλαμβάνει πια δράση, θεσπίζοντας τις κατάλληλες διατάξεις Οικογενειακού Δικαίου, 125 ώστε να επιτευχθεί η πολυπόθητη ισότητα των δύο φύλων. Με τον Νόμο υπ̕αριθμόν 1329/83, καταργείται κατ̕ αρχήν ο θεσμός της προίκας, υποχρεώνοντας και τους δύο συζύγους εφεξής να συνεισφέρουν στον οικογενειακό προϋπολογισμό. Προβλέπεται επίσης το δικαίωμα για τις γυναίκες να διατηρούν το λεγόμενο «πατρικό» τους επώνυμο και μετά το γάμο, να μπορούν να επιλέγουν από κοινού με το σύζυγό τους το επώνυμο του παιδιού τους, να μπορούν να αποκτήσουν παιδί εκτός 124 Για μια ιστορική επισκόπηση του ελληνικoύ γυναικείου κινήματος και των διακλαδώσεών του βλ. Μαρία Ρεπούση, «Ο χώρος των γυναικών. Πολιτικά κόμματα, γυναικείες οργανώσεις και ομάδες», στο συλλογικό έργο Ιστ ς τα, ορία του Νέου Ελληνισμού 17702000, Η Ελλάδα της Ομαλότητας 19742000, τόμο 10, Ελληνικά Γράμμα Αθήνα 2003 125 Για τον κρατικό φεμινισμό της δεκαετίας του ΄80, βλ. Μαρία Παντελίδου-Μαλούτα, «Κρατικός φεμινισμός και μέτρα για την έμφυλη ισότητα τη δεκαετία του ΄80», στο, Η ΕΛΛΑΔΑ ΤΗΣ ΔΕΚΑΕΤΙΑΣ ΤΟΥ '80 : Κοινωνικό, πολιτικό και πολιτισμικό λεξικό, επιμ. Β. Βαμβακάς, Π. Παναγιωτόπουλος, Το Πέρασμα, Αθήνα 2010 και Ελένη Γιαννακοπούλου, «Από το φεμινιστικό κίνημα στο θεσμοθετημένο φεμινισμό», Η Αυγή, 28 Φεβρουαρίου 2010 4.1:Όψεις του μεταπολιτευτικού άστεως 126 1329/83 (ΦΕΚ 25/Α/18-2-1983), Πηγή: http://www.isotita.gr/index.php/docs/c103/ 127 Για αυτά τα ζητήματα και τη διαχείρισή τους στα ελληνικά δεδομένα βλ. περισσότερα Γιώτα Παπαγεωργίου,«Κρατικός φεμινισμός στην Ελλάδα», και Ειρήνη Χιωτάκη-Πούλου,«Πολιτικός λόγος, 'φύ Χώρος και φύλο, εισ λο' και 'έμφυλη υποκειμενικότητα' στον συλλογικό τόμο Μαριάννα Ψύλλα (επιμ.), Δημόσιος αγωγή Μαριάννα Ψύλλα, Τυπωθήτω, Αθήνα 2009, σ.35-70, 71-100 αντίστοιχα. 128 Για τη σχέση νομολογίας, Οικογενειακού Δικαίου και φεμινιστικού νομικού στοχασμού, βλ. 4._ Πειραιάς, μια Άλλη πόλη: Ευαίσθητη ισορροπία και ένταση στους δρόμους της νουβέλας της Νικόλ Ρούσσου Πες στη Μορφίνη ακόμα την ψάχνω 110 |

Practical report (directorial/dramaturgical) of the Sarah Kane Research Group's ten-week exploration of Cleansed by Sarah Kane in Autumn 2009 at University of Huddersfield. Key Aims of the Research (2009):
1. To investigate rehearsal strategies and staging options for Cleansed with young women.
2. To explore the question of generational difference and its impact on considering the gender and social politics of Cleansed with young women.
3. To begin to shape a viable rehearsal process that can accommodate both performance art and conventional theatre processes side-by-side.
4. To build on my understanding of Irigarian theory and to explore whether Irigarian elements and world views naturally occur when young women work on a text such as Cleansed using interdisciplinary performance methods.

Ultimately, the workshops have sought to divine traces and moments of Irigarian theory, performance art, and the nexus (web) of drama history performed and problematised when young women follow an interdisciplinary (Feminist-inflected) approach to staging Cleansed (Sarah Kane, 1998).  A contemplation of these traces - discernible, articulate, unwitting, covert, partial and contradictory – will form the next part of my research. I am also considering my own role as an older woman, mother, theatre-maker and research-facilitator in the process and examining whether generational difference (if occurring and agreed upon as present / relevant) impacts on the revelation and performing of these traces.

This formed an early part of my PhD research on the play and most of the notes here were made and lodged with supervisors in January 2010,  as a possible Appendix to the thesis. I'm disseminating it now in 2019 with small edits as it offers a useful  document for anyone staging the play, also to those interested in using Irigaray's philosophies in theatre, in reflecting on generational differences between women and in exploring dramaturgical processes with a combined drama/performance art/making approach. Though the young women involved gave permission for me to use their names at the time (and I have used them when discussing selected examples in the PhD and other publications), I am mindful of a ten year gap  and as such have anonymised the names in the body of the text to preserve privacy.

Drawing on Judith Butler's seminal works on gender, this essay explores the changing representation of the female action hero through a comparative analysis of Sarah Connor from The Terminator series, and Wonder Woman from Patty Jenkins' recent films. Essay written for an Honours-year assignment for Uses of Theory.

The aim of this paper is to introduce the reader to the world of female-to-male crossdresser (dansō) escort and to analyse some research aspects of the ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in a dansō escort company in Tokyo, between September 2015 and July 2016. I will start my analysis explaining what the dansō escort service is and how it works, then I will proceed explaining how dansō build their male identity and what kind of connection can be found between crossdressing and homosexuality and I will identify the typology of customers who benefit from this peculiar escort service and the reasons behind their choice. Both the research questions will be tackled through the partial presentation of my research outcomes. To conclude, I will demonstrate the importance of direct participation of the researcher into the field in socio-anthropological research to obtain relevant findings.

Abstract Ethnography is a methodology that requires both intellectual and physical efforts and is carried out through the body. The body is also the site where affect is experienced, which in Massumi’s view is “an ability to affect and a susceptibility to be affected” of a body in constant transition. This article explores my ethnographic fieldwork on FtM crossdresser (dansō) escorts in Japan, taking into account the role played by the body, affects, and emotions, also analyzing their relationship with materiality and the surrounding environment. My body became the means of interaction with crossdressers and customers, and its masculinization affected and was affected by objects and the surrounding spaces. It was also the site where I experienced affective intensities descriptive of the experience of crossdressers and date clients. I first focus on the body and its physical and emotional reactions to investigate the practice of crossdressing, identifying the role played by objects in enhancing masculinity. I highlight crossdressers’ and customers’ management of spaces and human interactions as or towards displaced bodies. To conclude, I investigate the body as a way to interact with spaces and individuals from the standpoint of “affective correspondence”.

North Korean women encounter traumatic experiences escaping from North Korea. Upon arriving in South Korea, despite being officially welcomed as co-ethnics, many North Korean migrants find that their hopes for a better life are not realized. On the one hand, women arriving from the North are ethnic Koreans and speak the same language as South Koreans. On the other hand, they are in a territory whose culture and society are entirely foreign to them. Against this background, women from North Korea experience considerable trauma in South Korea as they struggle to negotiate new identities as gendered, liminal subjects in a cultural borderland. This article discusses a dance performance by an all-female performing arts troupe, P’yŏngyang Minsok Yesultan, to answer the following questions: How does the performance articulate traumatic and gendered migration experiences? To what extent might performance restore agency for North Korean trauma subjects? By closely engaging with North Korean women’s migration experiences and their performance practices in South Korea, the author shows that performance practices represent potentially empowering, affective sites that may open a space for restoration of North Korean women’s agency.

Sappho fr. 58 V., an extremely fragmentary poem considered hitherto to be a poem
“on old age”, has now been completed thanks to the recently discovered Cologne
Papyrus inv. 21351, published in 2004. The recovered verses and the theoretical import
of gender studies and pragmatic analysis now open up new readings. The song
combines three temporalities: the joyous moment of the musical performance, the
memory of the painful onset of old age, and, finally, the glowing evocation of the
abduction of Tithonus by the powerful goddess Dawn. Far from being a De senectute,
a mere didactic piece or a nostalgic lament on the passage of time, the poem
celebrates love and the intensity of love, offering identifications and parallels across
identities, ages and genders. Eros emerges as an impulse unfettered by sexual
boundaries.

The femme fatale has long been constructed and understood in popular culture and cinema as a beautiful heterosexual Caucasian woman that belongs to film noir and neo-noir. Here, Da Silva shows the need to incorporate diverse ethnic groups and male homosexuals into the range of "femmes" fatales. He examines how the Brazilian representations cross genre, gender, race, and class and offer alternative instances (black, slave, homosexual, married, and teenage) to the dominant Hollywood Caucasian model. As with gender performativity, the danger the femme fatale represents to society is constructed rather than being an innate feature. This figure represents areas of cultural anxiety, particularly around issues of sexuality and gender, but Da Silva seeks to reframe these issues in the context of Brazilian film.

Belinda is a novel about relations between women, even as it is also a novel about achieving domestic bliss and finding the right mate. One of the central symbols in the novel of both female same-sex relations and imperiled domesticity is the breast of Lady Delacour. Despite the novel's title, it is Lady Delacour who commands much of the attention in Belinda; she is a passionate, spontaneous, and intriguing character, particularly when compared to the rational protagonist Belinda. 1 She is additionally of interest due to her most mysterious, wounded breast which, according to Lady Delacour herself, is the external mark of her hidden suffering as well as the indiscretions which caused the wound. Read another way, however, Lady Delacour's diseased breast, which she firmly believes is cancerous and slowly but surely killing her, registers her complicated same-sex desires. The central role of Lady Delacour's breast also draws our attention to the other breasts and bosoms in the novel, both corporeal and metaphorical. As we begin to look more closely at the breasts of Belinda, it becomes apparent that the breast is a complicated site of interpretation that connects the women of the novel while also illustrating the importance of their relations to one another as equal to or even as more significant than the male-female relationships. The breast, rather than signifying domestic harmony, comes to symbolize the transgressive nature of female desire, complicating our understanding of the novel's ultimate message.

This paper studied the portrayal of gender through the performance of a specific character with varying roles played within the play of a biological male and female actor in the two versions of a theatrical production. The character ‘Actress A’/’Aktres A’ in Dulaang UP’s The Dressing Room: That Which Flows Away Ultimately Becomes Nostalgia (all female cast) by Shimizu Kunio, translated by John Gillespie and adapted by Chiori Miayagawa /Ang Dressing Room: Kung Saan Lubusang Pangungulila ang Dulot ng Agos ng Panahon (all male cast) translated in Filipino by Nicolas Pichay, was the focal point of this research. The processes and conceptualizations of the director and the actors playing ‘Actress A’/’Aktres A’ from the pre-production period to the production and show proper were analyzed. The perceptions of the audience members regarding ‘Actress A’/’Aktres A’s portrayal of varying characters, roles and preconceptions about sex and gender on the actual performances and after the last performance date were also taken into account. This study utilized the concept of the theater as a space for the construction of gender and identities.
The portrayal of various characters and roles of Actress A/Aktres A in agreement and contrast of the actors’ biological sexes had produced realizations among the director, actors and the audience. The initial intention for the director was to showcase the aspirations and desires of women in theatre and the Japanese theatrical tradition of males playing female roles called onnagata. In the process of the theatrical production, the actors’ construction of their characters/roles was permeated by the theater’s three regions; the off stage, backstage and the front stage. The backstage was the most essential region according to the actors playing Actress A/Akres A as it contained the processes of interactions with co-actors and members of the production, reiterations, explorations, rehearsals and (re)constructions from the pre-established frameworks of the script, the director and society. The majority of the audience suspended their disbelief and accepted the various characters and roles portrayed by the character of ‘Actress A’/’Aktres A’ as independent characters with preexisting sex and gender expectations without bearing on the sexed bodies of the actors. The audience recognized the stereotypical expectations and notions of gender through the performance of ‘Actress A’/’Aktres A’ on stage. The very portrayal of stereotypes and the preconceived notions of society regarding sex, gender and behaviors in the production had raised awareness among the cast members and the audience about the dominant structures that regulate our society and presented social realities happening today and the potential of theatre as an agency for social discourses and gender politics.

Extended deadline:

                                        Papers are welcome on:

women's suffrage drama and its appropriation of historical figures and periods (including the Medieval);
the work of Edith Craig, Christopher St John, the Pioneer Players;
early twentieth-century plays about prostitution/religion/abjection/imprisonment.

Background: Most research on drinking games (DGs) and the associated risks focuses on Western countries. In the Nigerian context, DGs activity has not attracted scholarly attention but growing media reports indicate that Nigerian youths play DGs, and that a number of gamers have died during or immediately after game-playing.
Methods: Drawing on gender performance scripts, we explored the performance of gender through DGs practices and the factors that motivate DGs participation. Thirty-one in-depth interviews were conducted with male and female college students (aged 19-23 years) at a university in south-eastern Nigeria.
Results: The participants discussed the popularity of the DGs that students play on this campus, identifying the spaces where each game is played and the motivations for game-playing. Collective, contextual constructions of gender identities through ‘Fastest-Drinker’ DG were identified, and the participants also performed gender through ‘Truth-or-Dare’ and ‘Endurance’ DGs. Men dominated ‘First-to-Finish’ DGs, which are played at parties and bars, and consumed beer or stout, whilst women, who mainly played Truth-or-Dare games, drank spirits or sweetened alcoholic beverages. Boredom and fun seeking provoked game-playing among women while adherence to masculinity norms, which engendered the public performance of masculinity and gambling activities, motivated men to play DGs. To avoid ‘collective shame’, men’s friendship groups provided support/care for inebriated game-playing members, but the immediacy of this support/care varied according to DGs type.
Conclusion: DGs appear to normalize heavy drinking and the culture of intoxication on this campus. Measures to monitor alcohol sales outlets around campuses and interventions that target students’ leisure spaces should be developed.

Interview with Kristin Lieb
Interview by Miranda Banks, Emerson College Edited by Nina B. Huntemann, Suffolk University
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The second presentation of the panel Debauched, Defamed, and Disempowered shifts attention from oppressed femininities to those who supposedly benefit from a patriarchal value system. Despite being representatives of what is widely considered to be the privileged gender in Western society, male celebrities are not exempt from being portrayed as victims of a public meltdown. As will be outlined in the paper, meltdowns suffered by celebrities such as Charlie Sheen, Mel Gibson, and Robert Downey Jr. reflect a male identity crisis stemming from contradictory cultural demands placed on men.

Identifying substance abuse and violence as two phenomena that are commonly cited as evidence of male celebrities’ meltdowns, the paper will shed light on social structures that celebrate Charlie Harper’s penchant of whisky and Mad Max’s killing sprees but condemns Charlie Sheen’s drunken escapades and Mel Gibson’s domestic abuse scandal. It will be argued that these socially maintained discrepancies have contributed to a widespread crisis of masculinity, which may, in turn, trigger an individual’s breakdown.

In addition to dealing with meltdowns as such, the paper will also investigate comebacks that were successfully launched by stars like Robert Downey Jr. Observing that such triumphant comebacks following a career-battering breakdown are less frequently found among female celebrities, it will try to identify the conditions that make a comeback attempt made by a troubled male celebrity, as opposed to one made by a female celebrity, more likely to succeed.

Ethnography is a methodology that requires both intellectual and physical efforts and is carried out through the body. The body is also the site where affect is experienced, which in Massumi’s view is “an ability to affect and a susceptibility to be affected” of a body in constant transition. This article explores my ethnographic fieldwork on FtM crossdresser (dansō) escorts in Japan, taking into account the role played by the body, affects, and emotions, also analyzing their relationship with materiality and the surrounding environment. My body became the means of interaction with crossdressers and customers, and its masculinization affected and was affected by objects and the surrounding spaces. It was also the site where I experienced affective intensities descriptive of the experience of crossdressers and date clients. I first focus on the body and its physical and emotional reactions to investigate the practice of crossdressing, identifying the role played by objects in enhancing masculinity. I highlight crossdressers’ and customers’ management of spaces and human interactions as or towards displaced bodies. To conclude, I investigate the body as a way to interact with spaces and individuals from the standpoint of “affective correspondence”.

From being temporarily barred entry into the United States in 2007 over her father’s ties to Tamil Tiger militants, to skirmishes with journalists over their coverage of her in the media, M.I.A. has consistently contested both critiques of her unabashedly radical advocacy and political stance, and attempts to confer credit on male co-producers for her music. I will argue that through both her interventions that aim to control her public image, as well as through her experimentation with different cultural and musical signifiers, M.I.A. enacts a feminist struggle for agency against the expectations of a culture industry that continues to objectify women of colour working within it. I will analyze two episodes in which questions regarding M.I.A.’s representation in the media have been raised: first the review of her 2005 album Arular on the influential music website Pitchfork, which wrested agency from her by suggesting that producer and former partner Diplo had primary control in the writing and recording process; second, her release of the answer song, “I Am A Singer (Haters),” following a scathing New York Times profile that traded on the contrast between her lavish lifestyle and her anti-establishment rhetoric and lyrics. Her defiant responses in both these episodes will anticipate my discussion of the broader trajectory of her music, as its blend of world music, hip hop and most recently American-style pop sounds, eludes the usual reliance on notions of generic authenticity. As George Lipsitz has argued with respect to such musical hybridity…..For M.I.A., the goal is always to experiment both sonically and thematically, which for her represents agency. As she sings on her latest album, /\/\/\Y/\ (2010), while she wants to “[s]ay something new, say something cool,” she also confronts the contradiction of this creative ethic with those in her audience who desire continuity of style, explaining that “[y]ou want me be somebody who I’m really not.”

In this article, we discuss a video project, Occupying Anonymous, conducted with a group of adolescent girls in an arts-based arbitration program for first-time juvenile offenders. By law, the program requires all adolescent participants to conceal their faces and other physical identity markers in their artwork to protect their public image. Through Occupying Anonymous, we aspired to address the tension between our participants' public visibility and anonymous art making by embracing anonymity as a performative strategy. The girls transformed their physical identities by creating alternate personas using wigs, makeup, costumes, and props to perform their poems or prose about significant issues in their lives. We employ productive intersections between theoretical frameworks of Muñoz's (1999) theory of disidentification, Deleuze's and concept of becoming, and Butler's (1990, 1993) notion of performativity to reframe gendered identity and self as supple, fluid, and open to multiple possibilities.

Terry Pratchett is world-famous for the narrative verve and surreal humour of his novels. But in Philosophy and Terry Pratchett, edited by Jacob Held and James South, readers are invited to meet another Terry Pratchett – a man of serious metaphysical ideas and sophisticated philosophical insights. In the book, thirteen professional philosophers and literary critics survey such key philosophical issues as personal identity, the nature of destiny, the value of individuality, the meaning of existentialism, the reality of universals and the existence of alternative realities. In considering these and many other equally fascinating themes, close reference is made to more than thirty-five of Pratchettʼs Discworld novels as well as to the ideas of some of historyʼs greatest philosophers.
In Chapter Three, “‘Feigning to Feign’: Pratchett and the Maskerade”, I discuss masques and veils, performance and disguise, acting, playing and play-acting in the novels of Pratchettʼs Discworld series, noting how the novels endlessly vary on the theme of duplicity and doubling, endlessly enacting the psychoanalytical truth that nothing is veiled by the veil except another veil. Putting Pratchett in dialogue with the thinking of Ervin Goffman, Joan Riviere, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Edward Said, and Judith Butler, the chapter explores Pratchettʼs constant recycling of and riffing upon the notion that, not only is the subject always in disguise, but that this disguise is always already the only reality of the subject.
It is characteristic of Pratchett, of course, to expose our intuitive understanding of the world as mistaken. In his presentation of performativity, he takes on our intuitive understanding that there is an opposition between the fake surface mask and a hidden depth of reality behind it, or between ‘being our real selves’ and performing the roles that society demands of us. Time and time again, Pratchett dramatizes how our misperception of the mask deceives us into thinking that such simple binaries exist. In other words, he points to the fact that the mask does not hide the truth as such, but, rather, acting as a screen that points to something non-existent beyond itself, functions to obscure the strange relation of truth and lies to mask-wearing and performance.

This study aims to: 1) explain the influence of government involvement and resources on the efficiency and performance of Water Supplier Companies; 2) explain the role of non market capability moderation in the relationship between environment, strategies, and the performance of Water Supplier Companies. The data were collected by using a survey on 60 Water Supplier Companies in Sulawesi. From those companies, 54 gave consent to participate in this study, but only 50 questionnaires can be analysed by using PLS. This reserach reveals that: 1) financial support from the local government was on time, and the water production capacity and distribution wereon optimal level; 2) the financial supportwas strengthened by the ability of the Water Supplier Companies to communicate with local government; and 3) the availability of resources -including pipe networks, machines, and pumpssuited the necessity.

This article investigates the possibility of representing a positive, strong and capable female hero who does not reproduce the masculinist ideology in the blockbuster film through the examinations of The Hunger Games (2012). The Hunger Games is a recent Hollywood blockbuster, which is known for its strong female protagonist and has achieved international commercial success. The article demonstrates that The Hunger Games presents the female hero who neither is a phallic figure in the guise of a woman nor is reduced to a sexual object by analyzing on the two aspects of the film: (a) the multifaceted role of the protagonist which often function simultaneously as the subject of action and the object of gaze; and (b) the performative nature of the protagonist’s actions that oscillate between the extreme masculinity and the typical femininity. While the dual role of the protagonist invites the audience to identify with her while looking at her as a spectacle, her gender-flexible performances expose the contingent relationship among anatomical sex, gendered roles, and the identity of hero. The article concludes that, despite its limitations, The Hunger Games indicates the possibility of the entertainment cinema that does not reproduce the existing gender hegemony.

This experiment was designed to examine the effects of gender role and task content on performance in learning dyads and to test the potential mediator effect of an intragroup process related to transactive memory. A total of 44 same-gender dyads participated in the study and were asked to collaborate on a stereotypically masculine or feminine task in a laboratory setting.

Against international literature that indicates that gender differences exist in the performance in introductory physics level students, this paper has examined the prospects of gender based differences in students' performance in introductory physics at the university level in South Africa. The study was conducted at four South African universities using a sample of 194 students. A third (68) of the participants in this research were female students. Student performance was measured through two instruments, namely 1) The Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE) tests adapted from and 2) the student's introductory physics mechanics marks. Both FMCE and mechanics courses lay the foundation for other physics courses. Student performances on the two instruments were analysed. The students' outcomes on these tests suggest that in the South African context, gender differentials do not necessarily predict performance in physics. In conclusion, this paper discusses other factors which in the context of South Africa need attention as possible barriers to general outcomes in physics.

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'Solga's book will appeal to all students of early modern drama and contemporary theatre, particularly those interested in gender and feminism. It is crucial reading for academics, but also for theatre practitioners seeking through their own productions to intervene in a theatrical history of representing violence against women in early modern drama.' - Farah Karim-Cooper, 'Contemporary Theatre Review'

Description:
'Violence Against Women in Early Modern Performance' explores rape and domestic violence against women around the turn of the seventeenth century in England, its pernicious erasure in the period's cultural representations, the framing and negotiation of that erasure in some of the most iconic texts in English theatre history – Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, Heywood's A Woman Killed With Kindness, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling – and the politics of rehearsing it all on our late twentieth- and twenty-first century stages. Solga positions the book as both a history and an ethics: early modern theatre texts are still produced regularly and to acclaim around the world, prompting her to ask how we might perform these texts with a difference, staging the history of violence's elision, rather than just that elision itself.

Contents:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Preface; Pascale Aebischer
Encounters with the Missing: From the Invisible Acts to In/visible Acts
Rape's Metatheatrical Return: Rehearsing Sexual Violence Among the Early Moderns
The Punitive Scene and the Performance of Salvation: Violence, the Flesh, and the Word
Witness to Despair: The Martyr of Malfi's Ghost
The Architecture of the Act: Renovating Beatrice Joanna's Closet
Afterword
Bibliography
Notes
Index

Author:
KIM SOLGA is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Drama at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. With D.J. Hopkins and Shelley Orr she is the editor of 'Performance and the City', also from Palgrave Macmillan.