Research Methods in Performance Studies

Research Methods in Performance Studies offers a unique approach for readers to engage with performance research and methods in practice. It examines ways of making performance, researching performance cultures, researching performers who themselves are engaged in research, and conducting research in the context of enduring and emergent themes of performance studies inquiry.

This book features the work of eighteen scholar-artists currently working in performance studies who demonstrate―through applied projects―various methods for conducting performance research. The result is a wide array of novel scholarship including activist performance, slam poetry, video performance, stand-up comedy, adaptation for the Broadway stage, naturecultural performance, intersectional performance, performances of cultural and material preservation, and many others.

Faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, and performance practitioners alike will benefit from the approaches to performance studies research methods articulated by the scholar-artists featured in this collection.

Craig Gingrich-Philbrook is Professor of Communication Studies at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA. His interests include postmodern performance, queer performance and theory, performance in mediated environments, philosophy of communication, and communication theory.

Jake Simmons is Associate Dean of the Judith Enyeart Reynolds College of Arts and Letters and Associate Professor of Communication at Missouri State University, USA. His research focuses on new materialist approaches to performative writing, autoethnography, and staging practices. He is editor of Text and Performance Quarterly (2022-2024).