PS Resource Guide

The department faculty has compiled an informative resource page with links to various sites to assist our students and alumni.  It can be challenging for students studying performance studies to find specific resources that might not turn up in popular search engines, especially those that can aid in research for a course, project, job, or dissertation — and most particularly those with reference to issues of critical race theory, critical Black studies, Queer studies, Feminist theory and their concurrent intersections with other disciplines and artistic practices. We created this resource as a starting point and will (remove hoped to)expand on it over time. If you are a current faculty, student, or alumni and would like to suggest a resource link for the page, please fill out this form.

IDBEA-Oriented Bibliography in PS

Books

The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas by Diana Taylor

Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics by José Esteban Muñoz

Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern by Jayna Brown

Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance by Uri McMillan

After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life by Joshua Chambers-Letson

After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life by Joshua Chambers-Letson

Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance by D. Soyini Madison

Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance by D. Soyini Madison

A Race So Different: Performance and Law in Asian America by Joshua Chambers-Letson

Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's "Dirty War" by Diana Taylor

The Decolonized Eye: Filipino American Art and Performance by Sarita Echavez See

Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class by Eric Lott

Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity by E. Patrick Johnson

Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic by Hentyle Yapp

Two Spirit Acts: Queer Indigenous Performances by Jean O'Hara

Embodying Mexico: Tourism, Nationalism & Performance by Ruth Hellier-Tinoco

Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Gnawa Trance and Music in the Global Marketplace by Deborah Kapchan

Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santeria by Katherine J. Hagedorn

Gendering the Spirit: Women, Religion and the Post-Colonial Response by Durre S. Ahmed

Children of the Earth Goddess: Society, Marriage and Sacrifice in the Highlands of Odisha by Roland Hardenberg

The Black Cow's Footprint: Time, Space and Music in the Lives of the Kotas of South India by Richard K. Wolf

Jewels of the Doctrine: Stories of the Saddharma Ratnavaliya by Thera Dharmasena

Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory, and Modernity in South India by Davesh Soneji

Acts of Gaiety: LGBT Performance and the Politics of Pleasure by Sara Warner

Political Performance in Syria: From the Six-Day War to the Syrian Uprising by Edward Ziter

Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official by Miriam Cooke

Critical Theory and Performance: Revised and Enlarged Edition by Janelle Reinelt

A Sourcebook on African-American Performance: Plays, People, Movements by Annemarie Bean

Hungry Translations: Relearning the World through Radical Vulnerability by Richa Nagar

Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life by Tavia Nyong’o

Folklore and Culture on the Texas-Mexican Border by Américo Paredes

Second Skin: Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface by Anne Anlin Cheng

Urban Bush Women: Twenty Years of African American Dance Theater, Community Engagement, and Working It Out by Nadine George-Graves

Modern Dance, Negro Dance: Race In Motion by Susan Manning

Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South by E. Patrick Johnson

The People Have Never Stopped Dancing: Native American Modern Dance Histories by Jacqueline Shea Murphy

Staging Race: Black Performers in Turn of the Century America by Karen Sotiropoulos

Art as Performance, Story as Criticism: Reflections on Native Literary Aesthetics by Craig S. Womack

In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition by Fred Moten

Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America by Sarah Schulman

Black Performance Theory by Thomas F. DeFrantz

The Racial Mundane: Asian American Performance and the Embodied Everyday by Ju Kim

Blacktino Queer Performance by E. Patrick Johnson

 The Transparent Traveler: The Performance and Culture of Airport Security by Rachel Hall

Negro Soy Yo: Hip Hop and Raced Citizenship in Neoliberal Cuba by Marc D. Perry

Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico by Petra R. Rivera-Rideau

Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings by Juana María Rodríguez

Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S. by H. Samy Alim

Black Linguistics: Language, Society and Politics in Africa and the Americas by Arnetha F. Ball

Black Talk by Geneva Smitherman

Word from the Mother: Language and African Americans by Geneva Smitherman

The Games Black Girls Play: Learning The Ropes From Double Dutch To Hip Hop by Kyra D. Gaunt

The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool by Brenda Dixon Gottschild

Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop by Imani Perry

Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times by Robin D.G. Kelley

Treme: Race and Place in a New Orleans Neighborhood (Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation) by Michael E. Crutcher Jr.

Behind the Mask of the Strong Black Woman: Voice and the Embodiment of a Costly Performance by Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant

Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations by bell hooks

Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance by Joseph Roach

Doomed by Hope: Essays on Arab Theatre by Eyad Houssami

How to Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of AIDS by David Gere

Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth-Century Blackface Minstrelsy by Brooks McNamara

Dancing the New World: Aztecs, Spaniards, and the Choreography of Conquest by Paul Scolieri

Embodying Black Experience: Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body by Harvey Young

Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage by Laura G. Gutiérrez

​​Remedios: Stories of Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriquenas by Aurora Levins Morales

Choreographing the Folk: The Dance Stagings of Zora Neale Hurston by Anthea Kraut

English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas by Coco Fusco

Demonic Grounds: Black Women And The Cartographies Of Struggle by Katherine McKittrick

Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora by Martin F. Manalansan IV

Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History by Heather Love

Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology by E. Patrick Johnson

Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Global Performance and Popular Culture by Harry J. Elam Jr.

Let's Get It On: The Politics of Black Performance by Catherine Ugwu

National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage by Karen Shimakawa

Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban Music by Alexandra T. Vazquez

Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible by Malik Gaines

Dissertations

Minding Otherwise: Autism, Disability Aesthetics, and the Performance of Neurological Difference

Hilton, Leon Julius. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2016.

Who do with words: Rapping a Black tongue around J. L. Austin (selected hits from 1979–1989)

Morris, Tracie. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2006.

“I want to be ready”: Improvised dance as a practice of freedom

Goldman, Danielle. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2006.

Sporting subjection, sporting subjectivity: Race, representation, and women's artistic gymnastics

Shakur-Bruno, Shani. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2006.

Dressing for Utopia: Fashion, Performance, and the Politics of Everyday Life in Turkey (1923-2013)

Altinay, Rustem Ertug. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2016.

"Revelations": The choreographies of Alvin Ailey

DeFrantz, Thomas Faburn. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1997.

Moving without the colonial mirror: Modernity, dance, and nation in the works of Vera Mantero and Francisco Camacho (1985–1997)

Lepecki, Andre Torres. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2001.

Hands, eyes, butts and thighs: Women's labor, sexuality, and movement technique from Senegal through the diaspora

Gittens, Angela D. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2008.

Wandering: Between performance and philosophy

Cervenak, Sarah Jane. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2005.

Dancing Haiti in the Break: The Labors and the Grounds of Dance in Haiti and its Diasporas

Chapman, Dasha A. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2015.

Dark matter in b-boying cyphers: Race and global connection in hip hop

Johnson, Imani Kai. ProQuest, Ann Arbor MI, 0, 2010.

Becoming Collective: Relational Cartographies of Creación Colectiva in Latin America

Robles-Moreno, Irma Leticia. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2017. 

Uncertain & Uncollectible: Jack Smith Performs the “Hatred of Capitalism”

Lubin-Levy, Joshua. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2020.

Caring Performance: Enduring Attrition in Queer and Feminist Asian America

McMaster, James. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2019.

Choreographing Chineseness: Global cities and the performance of ethnicity

Kwan, SanSan. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2003.

Blue magic: Stardom, soul music and illumination

King, Jason Gregory. New York University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2002.

NYU Library Research Guides