I am so humbled and honored to have been asked to put together a proposal for a conference panel at this year’s ASTR together with inimitable burlesque and striptease experts Kirsten Pullen and Jessica Berson. (Don’t miss Jessica’s new book The Naked Result: How Exotic Dance Became Big Business which promises to be a field-changer!) […]
In November, I attended ASTR (American Society for Theatre Research), an incredibly inspiring conference in the field of theatre and performance studies. The theme of the conference this year was “Debating the Stakes in Theatre and Performance Scholarship,” and panels ranged from debating food in performance (the steaks in theatre and performance…) to the politics […]
I created a word cloud from the 300 most common words in the titles of the talks and papers at ASTR this year. I removed the words “theatre” and “performance” as these would have dominated the visualization entirely. There are some really interesting interpretations of this visualization, I believe, and some conclusions to be drawn. […]
In this post, I will describe the process of bringing tweets from over the past year into a single heat map with interactive (clickable) tweets displaying more information. Most importantly perhaps, in what follows I will also readily discuss the flaws and problems of the methodology, in order to hopefully gain some insights into how […]
Later this month—on November 17th, to be precise—I’ve been asked to present a lightning talk on The Roots and Routes of Boylesque, likely very inspired by my presentation at ASTR later this week. I’m so excited! The event Media Res #2 will be a follow-up on the inaugural Media Res event earlier this Spring. It […]
Self-identified male bodies in burlesque has a history that goes further back than is normally considered in accounts of burlesque history and are an under-theorized absence in nearly all accounts of burlesque within Theatre and Performance Studies. More general studies of striptease, as well, do not normally focus on male bodies with a few notable […]
I am flying out to ASTR next week and am still wrapping up my blog entry for the working group. Some changes in my life have made it hard for me at times to focus on work matters after finishing and passing my comprehensive exams. But the paper is coming along — it will be cross-posted […]
This is a first draft of my visualization of the roots and routes of burlesque for my comprehensive exams. I will post a more fleshed out description of the visualization as soon as I have time (after I go in and write the exam on Wednesday this upcoming week). But I wanted to share with […]
I am making huge strides right now in relation to my second exam readings (I am almost entirely finished with my reading for two of the fields). Yet, I am also increasingly frustrated by something, which I assume is part of the idea of having a comprehensive exam in the first place: I am getting […]
This has been an exciting week on many levels. Personally, despite not being a huge fanatic when it comes to marriage and all of that, Friday’s victory is a landmark victory for those who want to get married. And maybe now, finally, the LGBTQ movement can get on to bigger questions such as the awful […]