Browse Books

On the Communicative Turn in Philosophy
Exploring Intersubjectivity, Community and the Ethics of Dialogue
The book aims to give prominence to the way the concept of communication has been deployed within philosophical debates. It shows how philosophers have adopted this concept in their discussions on the issues of intersubjectivity community and the ethics of dialogue.
Although mainstream philosophers do not as yet consider the philosophy of communication as a branch in its own right instead subsuming it within the philosophy of language as pragmatics the concept of communication is broader than that of language. This book aims to develop the relationship between communication and philosophy further.
Mangion hopes to encourage others to conduct further research by aligning communication with questions that are of a philosophical nature.

Outback
Westerns in Australian Cinema
Focusing on the incidence of the ‘Westerns’ film genre in the 120-odd years of Australian cinema history exploring how the American genre has been adapted to the changing Australian social political and cultural contexts of their production including the shifting emphases in the representation of the Indigenous population.
The idea for the book came to the author while he was writing two recent articles. One was an essay for Screen Education on the western in Australian cinema of the 21st century; the other piece was the review of a book entitled Film and the Historian for the online journal Inside Story . Between the two he saw the interesting prospect of a book-length study of the role of the western genre in Australia’s changing political and cultural history over the last century – and the ways in which film can without didacticism provide evidence of such change. Key matters include the changing attitudes to and representation of Indigenous peoples and of women's roles in Australian Westerns.
When one considers that the longest narrative film then seen in Australia and quite possibly the world was Charles Tait’s The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) it is clear that Australia has some serious history in the genre and Kelly has ridden again in Justin Kurzel’s 2020 adaptation of Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang.

Obsessions of a Showwoman
The Performance Worlds of Marisa Carnesky
Explores ‘showwomanry’ tracing a trajectory of incredible weird women at work: women who were stone eaters fire walkers women who hypnotized alligators or presented crucifixion shows; women in entertainment who worked for themselves; women that were often referred to as showgirls despite their extraordinary skill and artistry.
Carnesky continues an important lineage of performing women with bombastic theatrical flair and an extraordinary skill that ‘do not work for the management or the man. Showwomen work for themselves and other people work for them”. Carnesky has been a central figure in performance and live art during the last thirty years; her practice as a showwoman promotes alternative visions of matriarchal entertainment utopias and a new relationship to women’s position to power and politics.
The term showwoman introduces a new identity a new kind of performer who does not control or exploit others but opens up a possibility for collaboration that enables ‘shared experiences of visceral euphoria applause loss shape abjection hustle and struggle marginalisation and the fight against patriarchal injustices’ (Carnesky
2019 53). The book will use Carnesky’s work to showcase women working in radical ways treading the margins of cabaret and live art disrupting normative ideologies through the spectacular and opening new lines of feminist enquiry through weirdness absurdity provocation in live art and popular culture.

Off Book
Devised Performance and Higher Education
In the theatre world ‘off book’ signifies a deadline in the creative process: the date by which performers are to have memorised their lines and will no longer be allowed to carry their play script – the ‘book’ – on stage. As such Off Book makes a strangely appropriate title for a book about devised performance in higher education. In its usual context ‘off book’ captures the tension between ephemeral live performance and durable author-ized literature: in one sense the book – the written play – is the essential core the seed that gives the performance life and meaning. Yet the opposite could be equally true: an ‘on book’ performance would not really be a play at all and an actor reciting lines out of a script in hand is not really acting. A play is only realised in or through a performance. We cannot really learn or play our part until we can put the book down and enter the stage without it.
Devised performance might be described as ‘theatre without the book.’ Yet devisors also often use books – books like this one practical guidebooks and how-to manuals as well as a myriad of literature outside the discipline mined for inspiration. This is particularly manifest when devising in the context of higher education - a milieu like theatre wherein books traditionally signify authority status and meaning. So to the extent that theatres and campuses are places where one expects everything to be done ‘by the book’ devising on campuses is rebellious even sacrilegious. But on the other hand both the theatre and the university are expected to challenge tradition defy expectations and conduct experiments.
The book is presented in four sections reflecting the range of roles devising plays in higher education. The first section Devising Pedagogy: Teaching Transferable Tools examines how and why practitioners educators and programs conceptualise and plan for devising with adult learners in a range of higher education contexts. The second Devising Friction: Ensembles Individuals and the Institution shifts the discussion to the classroom where abstract pedagogical rubber meets the road of concrete reality. The third Devising (by) Degrees Practice-led postgraduate devising projects features contributions by emerging scholar-practitioners who engage with devising as both an object and method of creative scholarship. Finally the chapters in Devising Bridges: University-Community Engagement explore how devising connects higher education institutions with the public they are intended to serve — particularly in populations and communities that are marginalised within or even explicitly excluded from participating in higher education such as children and people with intellectual disabilities.
A valuable and unique resource for drama educators in universities university students in education drama and arts managements graduate students conducting research theatre historians practicing devised theatre artists.

The Otherness of the Everyday
Twelve Conversations from Chinese Art World During the Pandemic
At the end of 2019 to the beginning of 2020 when the coronavirus first emerged Wuhan in China became the first city in the world affected by this deadly disease. It then rapidly spread to the entire country and further on to Europe America and the rest of the world.
During these strange times we witness the emptiness of streets squares and cities everywhere; we are estranged from and yet ‘connected’ to each other. As a response to the pandemic Jiang Jiehong convened in-conversation talks with figures from different disciplines in the Chinese-speaking world including anthropology architecture art curating fashion film literature media museum music and photography.
The twelve high-profile participants in these conversations are Xiang Biao Zhang Peili Pi Li Zhang Zikang Gu Zheng Li Lin Zhang Zhen Shu Kewen Jiang Jun Wang Shouzhi Chen Danqing and Zhu Zheqin.
These conversations foster new understandings of this present-day crisis; the threat of the invisible notions of distance and spatialization separation and isolation communication and mobility discipline and surveillance and community and collectiveness as well as the increase in conflicts and divisive voices between China and the world. At the same time these reflections give us the opportunity to re-examine our past ‘normality’ and to project our future visions of a post-COVID world.
Readership will include those working and studying in the humanities and specifically in the disciplines of the interviewees and those who have particular interests in contemporary China. The Otherness of the Everyday is also of interest to a more general audience who has experienced the pandemic and is seeking innovative understandings of this global crisis in human history.

Orphan Black
Performance, Gender, Biopolitics
Orphan Black: Performance Gender Biopolitics is an edited collection that covers the areas in which the series has generated the most academic interest: performance and technology; gender and reproduction; biopolitics and community.
Chapters explore the digital innovations and technical interactions between human and machine that allow the show to challenge conventional notions of performance and identity while others address family themes and Orphan Black’s own textual genealogy within the contexts of (post-)evolutionary science reproductive technology and the politics of gender. Still others extend that inquiry on family to the broader question of community in a ‘posthuman’ world of biopolitical power; here scholars mobilize philosophy history of science and literary theory to analyze how Orphan Black depicts resistance to the many forms of power that attempt to capture monitor and shape life.

One Hundred Years of Futurism
Aesthetics, Politics and Performance
More than one hundred years after Futurism exploded onto the European stage with its unique brand of art and literature there is a need to reassess the whole movement from its Italian roots to its international ramifications. In wide-ranging essays based on fresh research the contributors to this collection examine both the original context and the cultural legacy of Futurism. Chapters touch on topics such as Futurism and Fascism the geopolitics of Futurism the Futurist woman and translating Futurist texts. A large portion of the book is devoted to the practical aspects of performing Futurist theatrical ideas in the twenty-first century.

On Repetition
Writing, Performance and Art

On Stage
The theatrical dimension of video imaged
In On Stage Mathilde Roman explores the resonances that fields of theatre – stage décor space gaze and more – have in the practice of video arts. Using these notions of theatre both as points of reference and as a prism through which video installation can be approached Roman concentrates on questions often overlooked by art historians theorists and critics. These include questions of exhibition architecture display viewer experience temporality and the importance of the gaze. Each chapter is articulated around analyses of video installations created by artists from Michael Snow to Maïder Fortuné and Dan Graham to Laurent Grasso. With a preface by Mieke Bal On Stage is an important contribution to the fields of art history and film studies.

The Only Way Home is Through the Show
Performance Work of Lois Weaver
Lois Weaver is one of the world's leading figures in feminist and lesbian performance a true pioneer in the growing field. This book offers the first book-length assessment of her career and work tracing its history aesthetics principles inspirations innovations and more. Contributors include Weaver's most important collaborators from throughout her career as well as many of the leading feminist theorists journalists and performers of the past forty years. The book also includes interviews not just with Weaver but also with her partner in life and performance Peggy Shaw and groundbreaking theatre maker Muriel Miguel. The result is a book that is truly unprecedented a lavishly illustrated and expertly curated celebration of an incredible career.

On Perfection
An Artists' Symposium

Open Roads, Closed Borders
The Contemporary French-language Road Movie

Octave Mirbeau: Two Plays
"Business is Business" and "Charity"
Octave Mirbeau was one of the most prolific literary figures of France’s storied Belle Époque and his innovative theatrical works are only recently being rediscovered and appreciated by modern audiences. Here for the first time in English-language translation are his two most celebrated and successful plays: Business is Business a classical comedy of manners recalling Molière; and Charity a satirical comedy centered around the exploitation of adolescents in a dubious charity home. In addition to the play texts this volume also includes an introduction contextualizing the works and the translation and adaptation process.

One for the Girls!
The Pleasures and Practices of Reading Women's Porn
We usually think of women as the victims of pornography rather than its consumers. Whether appearing in films peering provocatively from the pages of magazines or posing on explicit Web-sites women are considered the dehumanized objects of unseen lascivious male viewers. But in her controversial new book One for the Girls! Clarissa Smith debunks this myth and challenges women to read watch and enjoy pornography on their own terms. Focusing on the British magazine For Women Smith looks at its readers’ responses to male pinups and erotica and explores the intricacies of women’s unique reactions to pornography.
“Clarissa Smith has achieved something special with her new proffering from her masculinities repertoire. Smith’s text is groundbreaking multidisciplinary and—equally importantly—extremely readable. It is the last point perhaps that really sets this work apart as One for the Girls has a great deal to offer both the specialist academic and the general reader. Clarissa Smith’s accessible style allows readers with little prior knowledge of critical theory cultural studies or the 1980s pornography debate to not only understand these discourses but to develop a strong grasp of their impact in this context.”—Michelle Parsons Transition Tradition