Casting Gender

Casting Gender puts forward a vision of theatre, storytelling, and the performance of the everyday function within the lived spaces of its performers and audiences, asking how women artists/scholars embody meaning, carry social value, and constitute possible identities. Drawing on scholarship in intercultural communication, performance studies, women’s studies, and cultural studies, this collection of new, critically informed research advances our understanding of how theater works as intercultural communication and as a vehicle for change. Casting Gender offers varied locations and sites of research, highlighting the rich diversity of women’s cultural identities, roles, and societal positions. This book moves beyond the western-centered nature of intercultural performance and intercultural communication theory and practice by creating a forum for nonwestern voices.

The Editors: Laura Lengel began researching women and performance as a Fulbright Scholar in Tunisia. She is Associate Professor in the School of Communication Studies, Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. Her books include Culture and Technology in the New Europe, Computer Mediated Communication, and Intercultural Communication and Creative Practice: Music, Dance, and Women’s Cultural Identity. John T. Warren is Assistant Professor in the School of Communication Studies, Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. He has recently published essays in journals such as Communication Education, Qualitative Inquiry, and Text and Performance Quarterly. His first book, Performing Purity: Whiteness, Pedagogy, and the Reconstitution of Power, was published by Peter Lang Publishing in 2003.