History of Performing Arts

Screenwriter, director, producer and comic book author Joss Whedon is best known for his television series and films featuring villainous vampires, angry gods and even bloggers who wish to rule the world.

The Duffer Brothers' award-winning Stranger Things exploded onto the pop culture scene in 2016.

This collection of new essays focuses on The CW network's hit television series Arrow--based on DC Comic's Green Arrow--and its spin-offs The Flash, DC's Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl.

After a century of reinvention and, frequently, reinterpretation, Western movies continue to contribute to the cultural understanding of the United States.

George R.

More than 20 years after it was first broadcast, The X-Files still holds the public imagination.

Since its 2013 premiere, Orange Is the New Black has become Netflix's most watched series, garnering critical praise and numerous awards and advancing the cultural phenomenon of binge-watching.

The 21st century has seen a resurgence of popular interest in the Middle Ages.

The Wire's provocative subject matter, layered narrative and explicit critiques of American socio-economic institutions make it one of the most teachable television series in recent years.

Start your engines--for the fun, controversy and life lessons of RuPaul's Drag Race and its spinoff, RuPaul's DragU.

Fan CULTure explores how present-day fans interact with the films, television shows, books, and pop culture artifacts they love.

The great nineteenth-century stage actor Edwin Booth began his long career in 1849 as a young teenager, following in his father's footsteps.

Born into an upper-crust family in New Orleans, Cora Bell Witherspoon (1890-1957) was an orphan by the age of 10 and a professional actress by 15.

In the early 1890s, black performer Bob Cole turned blackface minstrelsy on its head with his nationally recognized whiteface creation, a character he called Willie Wayside.

In a new edition of this now-classic work, Robert Brustein argues that the roots of the modern theatre may be found in the soil of rebellion cultivated by eight outstanding playwrights: Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Brecht, Pirandello, O'Neill, and Genet.

One of the world's most well known fictional characters, Sherlock Holmes first appeared in print in 1887.

The Untold History of Television provides an exciting glimpse behind the scenes of the groundbreaking series that have defined the landscape of popular culture.

The Untold History of Television provides an exciting glimpse behind the scenes of the groundbreaking series that have defined the landscape of popular culture.

The Untold History of Television provides an exciting glimpse behind the scenes of the groundbreaking series that have defined the landscape of popular culture.

The Untold History of Television provides an exciting glimpse behind the scenes of the groundbreaking series that have defined the landscape of popular culture.

The Untold History of Television provides a captivating glimpse behind the scenes of the groundbreaking series that have both defined and changed the pop culture landscape.

The Untold History of Television provides a captivating glimpse behind the scenes of those groundbreaking shows that have both defined and changed the pop culture landscape.

The Untold History of Television provides a captivating glimpse behind the scenes of the groundbreaking series that have both defined and changed the pop culture landscape.

The Untold History of Television provides an exciting glimpse behind the scenes of the groundbreaking series that have defined the landscape of popular culture.

The Untold History of Television provides a captivating glimpse behind the scenes of the groundbreaking series that have both defined and changed the pop culture landscape.

Jane Austen wrote for a Regency-period audience and could never have predicted the lasting success of her original works.

This book shows how the totalitarian ideology of the Soviet period shaped the practices of Soviet theatre for youth.

Chronicling over forty years of changes in African-American popular culture, the Regal Theatre (1928-1968) was the largest movie-stage-show venue ever constructed for a Black community.

Pizzato focuses on the staging of Self and Other as phantom characters inside the brain (in the 'mind's eye', as Hamlet says).

Blending a flair for textual nuance with theoretical engagement, Theaters of Desire not only contributes to our understanding of the most influential form of early Chinese song-drama in local and international cultural contexts, but adds a Chinese perspective to the scholarship on print culture, authorship, and the regulatory discourses of desire.

This book offers new essays and interviews addressing Wilson's work, ranging from examinations of the presence of Wilson's politics in his plays to the limitations of these politics on contemporary interpretations of Black aesthetics.

This book explores representations of love and desire between female characters in nearly seventy plays written between 1580 and 1660.

Gentlemen Callers provides a fascinating look at America's greatest Twentieth-century playwright and perhaps the most-performed, even today.

This book is a feminist reading of gender performance and construction of the female role players, onnogata, of the Kabuki theatre.

In Staging Politics and Gender , Cecilia Beach examines the political and feminist plays of French playwrights who have largely been overlooked until now.

While analyzing Damon Runyon's high spirited work in terms of historical contexts, popular culture, and of the changing function of the media, Schwarz argues that in his columns and stories Runyon was an indispensable figure in creating our public images of New York City culture, including our interest in the demi-monde and underworld that explains in part the success of The Godfather films and The Sopranos .

Ruth Padel explores Greek conceptions of human innerness and the way in which Greek tragedy shaped European notions of mind and self.

This critical and inclusive edited collection offers an overview of the musical in relation to issues of race, culture and identity.

A far-reaching and engaging overview of the role of narrative in dance and theatre performance, bringing together chapters written by an international range of scholars and subsequently creating a critical dialogue for approaching this fundamental topic within performance studies.

Reproducing Athens examines the role of romantic comedy, particularly the plays of Menander, in defending democratic culture and transnational polis culture against various threats during the initial and most fraught period of the Hellenistic Era.

While every new TV series has to face some problems, no show had to overcome greater obstacles than Gilligan's Island.

Delve into the dynamic interplay of theater and society in 18th-century London with Box, Pit, and Gallery: Stage and Society in Johnson's London.

This book considers the cultural residue from pre-Christian Ireland in Synge's plays and performances.

This ground-breaking volume is the first of its kind to examine the extraordinary prevalence and appeal of the Gothic in contemporary British theatre and performance.

This book combines the insights of thirteen Shavian scholars as they examine the themes of marriage, relationships and partnerships throughout all of Bernard Shaw's major works.

This book sets out strategies of analysis of the award-winning tetralogy of performances (2010-14) by ANU Productions known as 'The Monto Cycle'.

This book explores an important moment in Italian women's theatre and cultural history: plays written for all-women casts between 1946 and the mid-1960s, authored for the most part by women and performed exclusively by women.

This book reveals how Fields became a character comedian while performing in Broadway's most illustrious revue, the Ziegfeld Follies.

This book discusses Irish Passion plays (plays that rewrite or parody the story of the Passion of Christ) in modern Irish drama from the Irish Literary Revival to the present day.

This book examines the globalization of belly dance and the distinct dancing communities that have evolved from it.