The Troubled Past, Present Disjuncture, and Possible Futures: Intercultural Performance Communication

ABSTRACT

The special issue on Performance Studies in Intercultural Communication research returns to the questions and critiques of scholarly validation to carve or (re)carve a space for Performance scholarship within Intercultural Communication. More specifically, this introductory piece explores why Performance Studies methods are stigmatized in Intercultural Communication research and makes the case for the sub-area of Intercultural Performance Studies in Communication. The performative turn in studying culture brought scholars back to the body as a central mode for research, of research, by researchers. What embodied research provides Intercultural Communication is a return to an ethical approach to studying culture through reflexivity and critical interrogations of power. We finish with a presentation of the contributors included in this special issue. The goal of this introductory piece is to contextualize the conversation that manifests a homeplace (hooks, 1990) for the academic homeless.

KEYWORDS:

• Performance
• the body
• international
• intercultural
• communication

Acknowledgments

We together thank the Journal Editor Jason Wrench for providing us the space to conduct in this special issue. We also thank the contributors for their powerful works and the peer-reviewers for their service. Moreover, we thank Dr. Sara Baugh for helping us copy-edit this essay. These were/are trying times to write and research, our deepest gratitude to everyone.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dawn Marie D. McIntosh

Dawn Marie D. McIntosh (Ph.D., University of Denver) is an independent scholar located in Colorado. Her research is focused in whiteness studies, feminist of color theories, qualitative research methods, performance studies, and critical rhetoric. She is the co-editor to Interrogating the Communicative Power of Whiteness.

Shinsuke Eguchi

Shinsuke Eguchi (Ph.D., Howard University) is Associate Professor of Intercultural Communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico. Their research interests focus on global and transcultural studies, queer of color critique, intersectionality and racialized gender politics, Asian/Pacific/American studies, and performance studies.