Prismatic Performances

At his 1994 inauguration, South African president Nelson Mandela announced the “Rainbow Nation, at peace with itself and the world.” This national rainbow notably extended beyond the bounds of racial coexistence and reconciliation to include “sexual orientation” as a protected category in the Bill of Rights. Yet despite the promise of equality and dignity, the new government’s alliance with neoliberal interests and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic left South Africa an increasingly unequal society. Prismatic Performances focuses on the queer embodiments that both reveal and animate the gaps between South Africa’s self-image and its lived realities. It argues that performance has become a key location where contradictions inherent to South Africa’s post-apartheid identity are negotiated. The book spans 30 years of cultural production and numerous social locations and includes: a team of black lesbian soccer players who reveal and redefine the gendered and sexed limitations of racialized “Africanness;” white gay performers who use drag and gender subversion to work through questions of racial and societal transformation; black artists across the arts who have developed aesthetics that place on display their audiences’ complicity in the problem of sexual violence; and a primarily heterosexual panAfrican online soap opera fandom community who, by combining new virtual spaces with old melodramatic tropes allow for extended deliberation and new paradigms through which African same-sex relationships are acceptable. Prismatic Performances contends that when explicitly queer bodies emerge onto public stages, audiences are made intimately aware of their own bodies’ identifications and desires. As the sheen of the New South Africa began to fade, these performances revealed the inadequacy and, indeed, the violence, of the Rainbow Nation as an aspirational metaphor. Simultaneously they created space for imagining new radical configurations of belonging.

The Book Studies The Theme Of Quest In T.S. Eliot S Drama, Showing How Religious And Symbolic Implications, Both Oriental And Occidental, Have A Direct Bearing On His Personal Life.Eliot Used Various Symbols In His Quest Because He Believed In The Idea Of The Objective Correlative, About Which He Speaks In His Essay Hamlet And His Problems. In Order To Express His Theme, Eliot Used Christian Symbols Like The Quest Of The Holy Grail And The Idea Of The Incarnation On The One Hand, And Non-Christian Elements Like The Teachings And Life Of The Buddha, Along With References To The Gita And The Upanishad On The Other. In His Quest For Form And Articulation Eliot Was Influenced By French Symbolist Poetry, The Metaphysical Poets, The Plays Of Shakespeare And His Contemporaries, The Poems Of John Davidson, Conrad S Fiction, Music-Hall Performances And Jazz Music To Name Only A Few.Eliot Wanted To Project Dramatization As The Ideal Form Of Poetic Articulation On Various Levels Of Significance Drama As A Diversified Multifarious Intensified Medium Of Audio-Visual-Intellectual Expression. His Search Seems To Have Led Him To A Kind Of Consummation As An Experimenter, In His Plays, In Communication Through Diverse Verse Forms, Themes, Characters And Situations, Exposing A Multiplicity Of Experiences Both Physical And Spiritual. In All His Plays There Is A Distinct Development Towards More Precise Articulation Of The Innermost Feelings And Emotions Of Modern Urban Man. But, More Important, The Book Traces Eliot S Personal Quest For Understanding The Meaning Of Existence His Own Life And Its Meaning Of Which His Poetry And Plays Are A Sort Of Autobiography.

This title deals with the many advantages associated to the use of natural light, comparing architectural experiences, technological devices and calculation methods. It provides an introduction to the problems and solutions of enhancing and conveying the right dose of daylight inside buildings, giving attention to energy savings and visual comfort

This is a guide to contemporary debates and theatre practices at a time when gender paradigms are both in flux and at the centre of explosive political battlegrounds. The confluence of gender and theatre has long created intense debate about representation, identification, social conditioning, desire, embodiment, and lived experience. As this handbook demonstrates, from the conventions of early modern English, Chinese, Japanese and Hispanic theatres to the subversion of racialized binaries of masculinity and femininity in recent North American, African, Asian, Caribbean and European productions, the matter of gender has consistently taken centre stage. This handbook examines how critical discourses on gender intersect with key debates in the field of theatre studies, as a lens to illuminate the practices of gender and theatre as well as the societies they inform and represent across space and time. Of interest to scholars in the interrelated areas of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, theatre and performance studies, cultural studies, and globalization and diasporic studies, this book demonstrates how researchers are currently addressing theatre about gender issues and gendered theatre practices. While synthesizing and summarizing foundational and evolving debates from a contemporary perspective, this collection offers interpretations and analyses that do not simply look back at existing scholarship, but open up new possibilities and understandings. Featuring essential research tools, including a survey of keywords and an annotated play list, this is an indispensable scholarly handbook for anyone working in theatre and performance.

Concrete and reinforced concrete remain the main building materials for construction of modern fortifications. The book presents experimental and theoretical results allowing production of special high-strength rapid hardening concrete and fiber reinforced concrete. It describes a method for effective proportioning of high-strength fast-setting concrete and fiber reinforced concrete with high dynamic strength as well as selecting proper technological parameters, methodology for design of reinforced concrete structures using such concrete. Particular attention is paid to ensuring the early strengthening of concrete within 24 hours after casting and to constructing structures with limited energy resources at the site.

A groundbreaking technical analysis of yacht design based on cutting edge research in the field of aero-hydrodynamics.

WILEY BLACK WELL COMPANIONS TO ART HISTORY A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework explores the ways specialists and institutions in the fine arts, curation, cultural studies, and art history have attempted to situate art in a more global framework since the 1980s. Offering analyses of the successes and setbacks of these efforts to globalize the art world, this innovative volume presents a new and exciting way of considering art in its global contexts. Essays by an international panel of leading scholars and practicing artists assert that what we talk about as ‘art’ is essentially a Western concept, thus any attempts at understanding art in a global framework require a revising of established conceptual definitions. Organized into three sections, this work first reviews the history and theory of the visual arts since 1980 and introduces readers to the emerging area of scholarship that seeks to place contemporary art in a global framework. The second section traces the progression of recent developments in the art world, focusing on the historical and cultural contexts surrounding efforts to globalize the art world and the visual arts in particular global and transnational frameworks. The final section addresses a wide range of key themes in contemporary art, such as the fundamental institutions and ontologies of art practice, and the interactions among art, politics, and the public sphere. A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, researchers, and general readers interested in exploring global art beyond the traditional Euro-American context.

There has been tremendous growth in the development of advanced marine vehicles over the last few decades and many of these developments have been presented at the International High Performance Marine Vehicles Conference held annually since 1997 in Shanghai, China. This comprehensive first volume covers high speed monohulls, multihulls, hydrofoil craft, air cavity craft and wing-in-ground effect craft. The papers cover a wide variety of hullforms, including deep-V hulls, stepped hulls, axe-bow hullforms, trimarans and pentamarans, foil assisted catamarans and air-lubrication craft. All aspects of design, including resistance, powering, seakeeping and maneuvering performance of these vessels, are covered through theoretical, experimental and numerical investigations.