Performing Difference

Performing Difference is a compilation of seventeen essays from some of the leading scholars in history, criticism, film, and theater studies. Each author examines the portrayal of groups and individuals that have been traditionally marginalized or excluded from dominant historical narratives.

Performing Difference is a compilation of seventeen essays from some of the leading scholars in history, criticism, film, and theater studies. Each author examines the portrayal of groups and individuals that have been traditionally marginalized or excluded from dominant historical narratives. As a meeting point of several fields of study, this book is organized around three meta-themes: race, gender, and genocide. Included are analyses of films and theatrical productions from the United States, as well as essays on cinema from Southern and Central America, Europe, and the Middle East. Topically, the contributing authors write about the depiction of race, ethnicities, gender and sexual orientation, and genocides. This volume assesses how the performing arts have aided in the social construction of the 'other' in differing contexts. Its fundamental premise is that performance is powerful, and its unifying thesis is that the arts remain a major forum for advancing a more nuanced and humane vision of social outcasts, not only in the realm of national imaginations, but in social relations as well.

Chapter 1 Section I - Race and Ethnicity
Chapter 2 1. Jonathan C. Friedman, A Conscience for Hollywood? The 'Societal Issue' Films of Twentieth Century Fox, 1947-1950
Chapter 3 2. Dalton Anthony Jones, Grounding Race: Powder and the Shifting Terrain of Whiteness
Chapter 4 3. Paul Pfeiffer, Shylock: Shakespeare's Sympathetic 'Other'
Chapter 5 4. Tia Malkin-Fontecchio, The 'New Marginality': Representations of the Favela in Recent Brazilian Cinema
Chapter 6 5. Margarete Landwehr, Liminal Spaces in Fatih Akin's Gegen die Wand/ Head On: Orientalism vs. Globalization
Chapter 7 6. Raz Yosef, Fantasies of Loss: Melancholia and Ethnicity in Israeli Cinema
Chapter 8 7. Jun Xing, Cinematic Asian Representation in Hollywood
Chapter 9 8. Bonnie Morris, Passing: A Reading on a Jewish Woman's Identity
Chapter 10 Section II - Gender and Sexual Orientation
Chapter 11 9. Melissa Ziobro, This Manifest Idignity: Hollywood's Portrayal of the Gender Integration of the Armed Forces in the World War II Era
Chapter 12 10. John M. Clum, Batting for the Other Team: Masculinity, Homosexuality, and Sports in Contemporary Drama and Film
Chapter 13 11. Geetha Ramanathan, Mestiza Feminisms and Julie Taymor's Frida
Chapter 14 12. Jonathan C. Friedman, The Problematic Ethnic and Sexual Discourses of Eytan Fox's The Bubble
Chapter 15 Section III - The Holocaust, War, and Genocide
Chapter 16 13. Ilan Avisar, Time and Representation: Generic Transformations and Historicist Interpretations of Holocaust Films
Chapter 17 14. John J. Michalczyk and Susan A. Michalczyk, The Bystander and the Other in Holocaust Films
Chapter 18 15. Christopher Thomas, Fiend, Foe and Friend: The German Image in American World War II Films
Chapter 19 16. Edward C. Hanes, Representations of Genocide in Recent Films
Chapter 20 17. William L. Hewitt, Genocide and Redemption in the Modern Western