I Have Loved Me a Man takes readers inside the social revolution that has moved New Zealand from the 1960s to the present day through the story of the queer Maori performance artist, Mika. Adopted into a white family, Mika learnt Maori culture from the back of a cereal box. He discovered disco in the 1970s, worked with Carmen, Dalvanius Prime, and others to develop outrageous stage shows, and came out on screen with Harvey Keitel, playing a takatapui role in the film The Piano...

The antagonists—oiled, shaved, pierced, and tattooed; the glaring lights; the pounding music; the shouting crowd: professional wrestling is at once spectacle, sport, and business. Steel Chair to the Head provides a multifaceted look at the popular phenomenon of pro wrestling. The contributors combine critical rigor with a deep appreciation of wrestling as a unique cultural form, the latest in a long line of popular performance genres. They examine wrestling as it happens in the ri...

Performance in Popular Culture reveals the intricate relationship between performance and popular culture by exploring how theatrical conventions and dramaturgical tropes have informed the way the social is constructed for popular consumption.Staged as a series of case studies, this book considers the diverse ways the social is imagined and produced in live and mediated performances, in images and texts, in interactive experiences and in cultural institutions. By looking a...

Professional wrestling is often seen as a suspect sport and marginal entertainment. It is also one of the most popular performance practices in the United States and around the world, drawing millions of spectators to live events and televised broadcasts. That its display of violence is at once simulated and actual is part of the appeal for the fans who debate performance choices with as much energy as they argue about their favorite wrestlers. Its ongoing scenarios and presentations of ma...

Professional wrestling is one of the most popular performance practices in the United States and around the world, drawing millions of spectators to live events and televised broadcasts. The displays of violence, simulated and actual, may be the obvious appeal, but that is just the beginning. Fans debate performance choices with as much energy as they argue about their favorite wrestlers. The ongoing scenarios and presentations of manly and not-so-manly characters—from the flamboyantly fem...

Professional wrestling is one of the most popular performance practices in the United States and around the world, drawing millions of spectators to live events and televised broadcasts. The displays of violence, simulated and actual, may be the obvious appeal, but that is just the beginning. Fans debate performance choices with as much energy as they argue about their favorite wrestlers. The ongoing scenarios and presentations of manly and not-so-manly characters—from the flamboyantly fem...

Whether along race, class or generational lines, hip-hop music has been a source of controversy since the beats got too big and the voices too loud for the block parties that spawned them. America has condemned and commended this music and the culture that inspires it. Dubbed "the Hip-Hop Intellectual" by critics and fans for his pioneering explorations of rap music in the academy and beyond, Michael Eric Dyson is uniquely situated to probe the most compelling and controversial dimensions ...

At the age of nineteen, Nasir "Nas" Jones began recording tracks for his debut album -- and changed the music world forever. Released in 1994, Illmatic was hailed as an instant masterpiece and has proven one of the most influential albums in hip-hop history. With its close attention to beats and lyricism, and riveting first-person explorations of the isolation and desolation of urban poverty, Illmatic was pivotal in the evolution of the genre.In Born to Use Mi...

How hip hop shapes our conversations about race -- and how race influences our consideration of hip hopHip hop is a distinctive form of black art in America-from Tupac to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Kendrick Lamar, hip hop has long given voice to the African American experience. As scholar and cultural critic Tricia Rose argues, hip hop, in fact, has become one of the primary ways we talk about race in the United States.But hip hop is in crisis. For years, t...

Mainstream rap's seductive blend of sexuality, violence, and bravado hardly seems the stuff of school curricula. And chances are good that the progressive and revolutionary "underground" hip-hop of artists such as The Roots or Mos Def is not on the playlists of most high-school students. That said, hip-hop culture remains a profound influence on contemporary urban youth culture and a growing number of teachers are developing strategies for integrating it into their classrooms. While most o...

Winner of IASPM's 2005 International Book AwardBased on ten years of research among hip-hop producers, Making Beats was the first work of scholarship to explore the goals, methods, and values of a surprisingly insular community. Focusing on a variety of subjects—from hip-hop artists' pedagogical methods to the Afrodiasporic roots of the sampling process to the social significance of "digging" for rare records—Joseph G. Schloss examines the way hip-hop artists have ...

On both sides of the stage improv-comedy's popularity has increased exponentially throughout the 1980s and '90s and into the new millennium. Presto! An original song is created out of thin air. With nothing but a suggestion from the audience, daring young improvisers working without a net or a script create hilarious characters, sketches, and songs. Thrilled by the danger, the immediacy, and the virtuosity of improv-comedy, spectators laugh and cheer.American improv-comedy burst on...