Staging Nation

Staging Nation examines the complex relationship between the theatrical stage and the wider stage of nation building in postcolonial Malaysia and Singapore. In less than fifty years, locally written and produced English language theatre has managed to shrug off its colonial shackles to become an important site of community expression. This groundbreaking comparative study discusses the role of creative writing and the act of performance as actual political acts and as interventions in national self-constructions. It argues that certain forms of theatre can be read as emerging oppositional cultures that contribute towards the deepening of democracy by offering contending narratives of the nation. Jacqueline Lo is Senior Lecturer at the School of Humanities, Australian National University. She has published widely on postcolonial theory, performance studies and Asian-Australian cultural politics. She is the editor of Theatre in Southeast Asia, and co-editor of Diaspora: Negotiating Asian-Australia.

In Staging the Nation: Opera and Nationalism in 19th-Century Hungary, Krisztina Lajosi examines the crucial role of theatre and opera in the shaping of historical consciousness and the formation of national identity by turning opera-loving audiences into a national public.

Based on over a decade of fieldwork conducted with urban Roma, Staging Citizenship offers a powerful new perspective on one of the European Union’s most marginal and disenfranchised communities. Focusing on “performance” broadly conceived, it follows members of a squatter’s settlement in Transylvania as they navigate precarious circumstances in a postsocialist state. Through accounts of music and dance performances, media representations, activism, and interactions with both non-governmental organizations and state agencies, author Ioana Szeman grounds broad themes of political economy, citizenship, resistance, and neoliberalism in her subjects’ remarkably varied lives and experiences.

Staging Philanthropy is a history of women's philanthropic associations during Germany's "long" nineteenth century. Challenged by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic occupation and war, dynastic groups in Germany made community welfare and its defense part of newly-gendered social obligations, sponsoring a network of state women's associations, philanthropic institutions, and nursing orders which were eventually coordinated by the German Red Cross. These patriotic groups helped fashion an official nationalism that defended conservative power and authority in the new nation-state. An original and truly multi-disciplinary work, Staging Philanthropy uses archival research to reconstruct the neglected history of women's philanthropic organizations during the 'long' nineteenth century. Borrowing from cultural anthropologists, Jean Quataert explores how meaning is created in the theater of politics. Linking gender with nationalism and war with humanitarianism, Quataert weaves her analysis together with themes of German historiography and the wider context of European history. Staging Philanthropy will interest readers in German history, women's history, politics and anthropology, as well as those whose interest is in medicalization and the German Red Cross. This book situates itself in the middle of a string of debates pertaining to modern German history and, thus, should also appeal to readers from the general educated public. Jean Quataert is Professor of History and Women's Studies, Binghamton University. She has previously published a number of books, including Connecting Spheres: European Women in a Globalizing World, 1500 to the Present with Marilyn J. Boxer (Oxford, 1999).

Applying current political theory on nationhood as well as methods established by recent performance studies, this study sheds new light on the role the public theatre played in the rise of English national identity around 1600. It situates selected history plays by Shakespeare and Marlowe in the context of non-fictional texts (such as historiographies, chorographies, political treatises, or dictionary entries) and cultural artefacts (such as maps or portraits), and thus highlights the circulation, and mutation, of national thought in late sixteenth-century culture. At the same time, it goes beyond a New Historicist approach by foregrounding the performative surplus of the theatre event that is so essential for the shaping of collective identity. How, this study crucially asks, does the performative art of theatre contribute to the dynamics of the formation of national identity? Although theories about the nature of nationalism vary, a majority of theorists agree that notions of a shared territory and history, as well as questions of religion, class and gender play crucial roles in the shaping of national identity. These factors inform the structure of this book, and each is examined individually. In contrast to existing publications, this inquiry does not take for granted a pre-existing national identity that simply manifested itself in the literary works of the period; nor does it proceed from preconceived notions of the playwrights’ political views. Instead, it understands the early modern stage as an essentially contested space in which conflicting political positions are played off against each other, and it inquires into how the imaginative work of negotiating these stances eventually contributed to a rising national self-awareness in the spectators.

At the same time, official speeches and proceedings on colonial practices, such as the public trials of Clive and Hastings, became theatrical events themselves."--Jacket.

"When a nation wants to reconnect with a sense of national identity, its cultural celebrations, including its theatre, are often tinged with nostalgia for a cultural high point in its history. Leaders often try to create a "neo-classical" cultural identity. This collection of essays discusses the relationship between political power and the construction or subversion of cultural identity"--Provided by publisher.

The first anthology of First Nations drama to be published in Canada, this volume includes seminal work by various authors, and also features previously unpublished plays.