Sean Metzger

Roberta Mock

This is a guide to contemporary debates and theatre practices at a time when gender paradigms are both in flux and at the centre of explosive political battlegrounds. The confluence of gender and theatre has long created intense debate about representation, identification, social conditioning, desire, embodiment, and lived experience. As this handbook demonstrates, from the conventions of early modern English, Chinese, Japanese and Hispanic theatres to the subversion of racialized binaries of masculinity and femininity in recent North American, African, Asian, Caribbean and European productions, the matter of gender has consistently taken centre stage. This handbook examines how critical discourses on gender intersect with key debates in the field of theatre studies, as a lens to illuminate the practices of gender and theatre as well as the societies they inform and represent across space and time. Of interest to scholars in the interrelated areas of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, theatre and performance studies, cultural studies, and globalization and diasporic studies, this book demonstrates how researchers are currently addressing theatre about gender issues and gendered theatre practices. While synthesizing and summarizing foundational and evolving debates from a contemporary perspective, this collection offers interpretations and analyses that do not simply look back at existing scholarship, but open up new possibilities and understandings. Featuring essential research tools, including a survey of keywords and an annotated play list, this is an indispensable scholarly handbook for anyone working in theatre and performance.

The Methuen Drama Handbook of Gender and Theatre

Khoo Olivia

With the burgeoning interest in Chinese film, this interdisciplinary collection investigates how new technologies, changing production constraints and shifting viewing practices have shaped perceptions of Chinese screen cultures. Futures of Chinese Cinema contains essays by international scholars considering new directions in Chinese cinema. After the devastation of the economic crisis, the uncertainty of the Hong Kong handover and the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989, the late twentieth century and beyond has seen the emergence of a number of fresh new works from the region’s film-makers. For the first time, scholars from film studies, media studies, history and sociology have been brought together in their focus on the concepts of technology and temporality in these films.The book is innovative in its approach by arguing for a broadening of Chinese screen cultures to account for new technologies of screening – from computers and digital video to smaller screens (including mobile phones). It also examines time and technology in both popular blockbusters and independent, art films.

Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures

Futures of Chinese Cinema

Olivia Khoo

"With the burgeoning interest in Chinese film, this interdisciplinary collection investigates how new technologies, changing production constraints and shifting viewing practices have shaped perceptions of Chinese screen cultures. Futures of Chinese Cinema contains essays by international scholars considering new directions in Chinese cinema. After the devastation of the economic crisis, the uncertainty of the Hong Kong handover and the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989, the late twentieth century and beyond has seen the emergence of a number of fresh new works from the region's film-makers. For the first time, scholars from film studies, media studies, history and sociology have been brought together in their focus on the concepts of technology and temporality in these films."--P. [4] of cover.

From yellow-face performance in the 19th century to Jackie Chan in the 21st, Chinese Looks examines articles of clothing and modes of adornment as a window on how American views of China have changed in the past 150 years. Sean Metzger provides a cultural history of three iconic objects in theatrical and cinematic performance: the queue, or man's hair braid; the woman's suit known as the qipao; and the Mao suit. Each object emerges at a pivotal moment in US-China relations, indexing shifts in the balance of power between the two nations. Metzger shows how aesthetics, gender, politics, economics, and race are interwoven and argues that close examination of particular forms of dress can help us think anew about gender and modernity.

Sean Metzger

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