Synopsis
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.
About the Authors
John J. Michalczyk is Professor and Director of Film Studies in the Art, Art History, and Film department of Boston College, USA, and author and/or editor of fourteen books, including works on Ingmar Bergman, as well as on French and Italian filmmakers. More recently he has published Filming the End of the Holocaust (Bloomsbury 2016), Confront! Resistance in Nazi Germany (2005), and Nazi Law: From Nuremberg to Nuremberg (Bloomsbury 2017). Since 1992, he has been a documentary filmmaker, whose works include The Cross and the Star: Jews, Christians and the Holocaust; Nazi Medicine: In the Shadow of the Reich; Creating Harmony: The Displaced Jewish Orchestra from St. Ottilien; Writing on the Wall: Remembering the Berlin Wall; Nazi Law: Legally Blind; and Hitler's Mein Kampf: Prelude to the Holocaust.
Susan A. Michalczyk is a professor in the Boston College Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, USA. Author, editor, and documentary filmmaker, her main interests are comparative literature, language, art, and film, focus upon the autobiographical narrative/memory experience as it relates to film and literature. She has been a partner with her husband, John J. Michalczyk, in both teaching and film production for over twenty-five years, focusing on issues of social justice and human rights. Co-producer and scriptwriter, her works include Nazi Medicine: In the Shadow of the Reich; Creating Harmony: The Displaced Persons' Orchestra from St. Ottilien; Killing Silence: Taking on the Mafia in Sicily; Writing on the Wall: Remembering the Berlin Wall; Lou Montgomery: A Legacy Restored; Nazi Law: Legally Blind, Hitler's Mein Kampf: Prelude to the Holocaust.
Raz Yosef is associate professor in the Department of Film and Television at Tel-Aviv University. His work on gender, sexuality and ethnicity in Israeli visual culture has appeared in GLQ, Third Text, Shofar, Framework and Camera Obscura. He is author of Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema (2004); To Know a Man: Sexuality, Masculinity and Ethnicity in Israeli Cinema (2010); The Politics of Loss and Trauma in Contemporary Israeli Cinema (forthcoming 2011).
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