Performance studies in communication

ABSTRACT

This study examines the near 40-year publishing history of Literature in Performance: A Journal of Literary and Performing Art (1980–1988) and Text and Performance Quarterly (1989-present) for evidence of shifting trends in performance scholarship. The history of this journal is inextricable from the development of performance studies in communication, as its changing content and structure reveal pivotal developments and “turns” in the field. We map these trends – toward literature, feminist thought, queer performance, multi/cultural performance, media, and the personal turn – before speculating about the current and future trajectories of performance studies in communication.

KEYWORDS:

• Performance studies
• communication
• text and performance quarterly
• literature in performance
• history

Acknowledgements

For Craig Gingrich-Philbrook and the other trendsetters who, over the past 100 years, dedicated their lives building us a home in PSC.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Throughout this essay, we use the abbreviation PSC to refer specifically to the tradition of performance studies scholarship that is derived from, or takes place under the aegis of, speech and performance studies. We use “performance studies” as a broader catch-all term that includes the theatre-inflected varieties of performance research that operate under the same moniker. Performance studies in communication refers to both the disciplinary moniker “communication,” in which our genre of performance studies – PSC – is housed, as well as our hope that PSC scholars will communicate more frequently about the relationships and tensions among the disparate areas of research that comprise our metadiscipline. This formulation – “performance studies in communication” – also appears in the acknowledgements of Elizabeth Bell’s Theories of Performance, wherein Bell uses the term to mark the same disciplinary community with which we concern ourselves in this essay (xiv).

2 We are hardly the first to call attention to this particular disciplinary tension between disciplinary expansion and disciplinary anxiety. For example, see Pelias, “Meditations.”

3 For example, the infamous 1990 Forum discussion that surrounded the proposed disciplinary title change from “interpretation” to “performance studies” and provided a space for a variety of discontented voices, particularly those of Wendt (248–56) and Schneider (264–65), as well as the voices of those critical of a desire to recount a (presumed) historical, disciplinary unity (P.H. Gray 262–64).

4 We would suggest that Conquergood’s germinal essay “Performing as a Moral Act” is not explicitly concerned with the oral and/or staged performance of traditionally-defined literary art, though its eventual importance to performance ethnography, personal narrative performance, and a host of other varieties of performance that would dominate the field after the “cultural turn” cannot be overstated.

5 It is worth noting that this period of TPQ history (1992–1994) is also the era in which Kristin Langellier was the lead editor for the journal; her influence over the journal’s content, particularly in terms of feminist critique, is clearly visible.

6 The publication “Sextext,” of course, launched one of the great communication studies rows of the 1990s, inaugurating a year-long debate on the CRTNET list-serv about the use of autoethnographic methods, pornography (as a dog whistle for homophobia), and about the validity of performance studies as an academic discipline. For perspectives on the debate, see Benson, Gray (“Calling”), and Gingrich-Philbrook (“Disciplinary”).

7 The formulation of “Quare Studies” would go on to reappear in the journal, both as a means of considering the funeral of dancer Alvin Ailey (Hatfield), as well as serving as a means of reading gay Southern rap (Eguchi and Roberts).

8 These numbers are undoubtedly debatable; as mentioned, it is possible to argue for, or against, the inclusion of a wide variety of contributions to TPQ as part of a broad “turn” or “trend” toward queer lives, aesthetics, and theories. We have opted for the broadest analysis, recognizing that others may desire to continue this analysis in a more granular fashion.

9 For a critique of Conquergood’s essay, particularly the “Enthusiast’s Infatuation,” see Kanter’s 2007 essay, “‘Incident’: Performing as a Moral Act Two Decades Later.”

10 Volumes 13.1 and 14.3 are designated as such in the T&F database.

11 It was not, strictly speaking, the first appearance of the term “autoethnography” in the pages of TPQ, however. The term first appears, as best we can tell, in Judith Hamera’s 1991 article about Rachel Rosenthal (“Loner”). In this essay, Hamera describes Rosenthal’s performances as “healing autoethnographies,” drawing that term from Francoise Lionnet’s 1989 book Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture. The fact that this term existed in the journal as early as 1991 suggests that, insofar as the NCA Interpretation Division’s 1991 name change to the “Performance Studies Division” marks a titular founding moment of (communication-oriented) performance studies, a concern with autoethnography has been endemic to the field since its very inception. The recent decision to alter the name of the Central States Communication Association’s “Performance Studies and Theatre Division” to “Performance Studies and Autoethnography Division” is informed by, and a contemporary manifestation of, this long disciplinary alliance.

12 Though, as we have pointed out in the course of this essay, it is likely that this notion of being a “literature-based” set of scholars has not been true for at least a decade, and likely longer, if we refer to an era wherein literature was the dominant concern of “Midwestern” performance studies.

13 The question of degree overproduction is a difficult one to address in PSC, for a number of reasons. The first is that incomplete data exist regarding the total number of PhD degrees produced, and the total number of tenure-track (TT) positions in PSC available across a given period of time. There is, however, information compiled regarding the broader field of “theatre and performance studies” (TPS). According to research presented at the 2018 “Symposium of Doctoral Programs in Theatre and Performance Studies” (Montez), an average of 90 TPS PhDs are awarded annually, while there are, on average, 55 TT academic positions in TPS available (1.64 PhDs/position, a ratio that increases yearly via the compounding effect of approximately 35 degree holders rolling over into the following year’s job pool, resulting in a ratio that has never been this low in any given year). In an effort to address this overproduction question as restricted to PSC, we reviewed the available jobs data for NCA performance studies, wherein we found that during the period from 2013 to 2017/2018, 27 positions were posted (both TT and contingent faculty). In the same period, the PSC departments of LSU, SIUC, and Northwestern produced a combined total of 47 performance studies-affiliated PhDs, alongside unknown numbers of PhD degrees produced by other communication studies-affiliated departments (UNC, USF, etc.). This would suggest that an extremely conservative ratio of PhDs-produced-to-jobs-available in PSC is 1.74 PhDs/position. The number of PhDs/position is certainly much higher in practice, if the unaccounted for PhDs are factored into the equation, the yearly compounding of job-seekers is added, the TT positions are distinguished from the contingent-hire positions, and the reality is acknowledged that TPS PhDs also successfully compete for these PSC positions (alongside communication studies PhD holders). The second difficulty is that these numbers do not account for the possibility that PSC PhDs could seek TT employment as communication studies generalists, or pursue opportunities in other branches of communication studies. The overall TT placement rate of TPS is around 38% (38% of terminal degree holders pursuing TT jobs end up in one, while 25% hold positions as contingent faculty). Based upon the possibility of generalist communication studies employment, the overall likelihood of TT placement among PSC PhD holders may be significantly higher than for theatre-aligned performance studies scholars, albeit not specifically in TT performance studies positions. On the question of employment in a TT role specifically dedicated to Performance Studies, the PSC placement rate is almost unquestionably lower than 38% of PhD holders. This reality points to the importance of Taylor’s contention that training PSC PhDs as communication studies generalists or area co-specialists may be the only way to ensure that a majority of TT-seeking PSC PhD holders end up in academia at all.

14 For examples of essays that attempt this sort of direct conversation between PSC and other specialist areas of communication studies, see Gingrich-Philbrook (“Autobiographical”); Cherwitz and Darwin’ and TPQ 34.1 (2014), a special issue dedicated to “Performance and Rhetoric.”