A kaleidoscopic consideration of transnational culture and performance

Amid the modern-day complexities of migration and exile, immigration and repatriation, notions of stable national identity give way to ideas about cultural “hybridity.” The authors represented in this volume use different forms of performative writing to question this process, to ask how the production of new political identities destabilizes ideas about gender, sexuality, and the nation in the public sphere.

Contributors use forms such as the essay, poem, photography, and case study to examine historically specific cases in which the notion of hybridity recasts our ideas of identity and performance: the struggle for Aboriginal land rights in Australia; Bahian carnival; the creolization and pidginization of language in the Caribbean world; queer videos; and others. Contributors: Meena Alexander, CUNY; Awam Amkpa, Mount Holyoke; Tony Birch; Barbara Browning, New York U; Manthia Diawara, New York U; Fiona Foley; Sikivu Hutchinson; Deborah A. Kapchan, U of Texas; Toby Miller, New York U; Shani Mootoo; Fred Moten, U of California, Santa Barbara; José Esteban Muñoz, New York U; Chon A. Noriega, UCLA; Celeste Olalquiaga; Ella Shohat, CUNY; Robert Stam, New York U.

May Joseph is assistant professor of Performance Studies at New York University.

Jennifer Natalya Fink is visiting assistant professor at Pratt Institute and adjunct professor of drama at New York University.