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Petra Kuppers Associate Professor, English Department University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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| Education | Publications | Artistic Practice | Teaching | Community Service |
Honors (Selection)
Books (academic)
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Publishers Abstract: The Scar of Visibility: Medical
Performances and Contemporary Art grapples with the mysteries of human
bodies in art and contemporary culture. Online Reviews: Screening the Past, Disability Studies Quarterly, Metapsychology |
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Publishers Abstract: Community Performance: An Introduction is a comprehensive and accessible practice-based primer for students and practitioners of community arts, dance and theatre. This book is both a classroom-friendly textbook and a handbook for the practioner, perfectly answering the needs of a field where teaching is orientated around practice. Offering a toolkit for students interested in running community arts groups, this book includes:
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Publishers
Abstract: Disability and Contemporary Performance presents a remarkable
challenge to existing assumptions about disability and artistic practice.
In particular, it explores where cultural knowledge about disability leaves
off, and the lived experience of difference begins. Petra Kuppers, herself
an award-winning artist and theorist, investigates the ways in which disabled
performers challenge, change and work with current stereotypes through
their work. She explores freak show fantasies and 'medical theatre' as
well as live art, webwork, theatre, dance, photography and installations,
to cast an entirely new light on contemporary identity politics and aesthetics. |
Books (Poetry)
- Cripple Poetics: A Love Story. A Collaboration with Neil Marcus. With photographs by Lisa Steichmann. Homofactus Press, forthcoming July/August 2008.
Books (Editions)
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Community Performance: A Reader brings together core writings and critical approaches to community performance work, presenting practices in the UK, US, Australia and beyond. This volume offers a complex and comprehensive anthology of key writings in the vibrant field of community performance, spanning dance, theatre and visual practices. The Reader uniquely combines classic writings from major theorists and practitioners such as Augusto Boal, Paolo Freire, Dwight Conquergood and Jan Cohen Cruz, with newly commissioned essays that bring the anthology right up to date with current practice. This book can be used as a standalone text or together with its companion volume, Community Performance: An Introduction, to offer an accessible and classroom-friendly introduction to the field of community performance. |
Guest Editor of Disability Studies Quarterly. Changing Images of Disability. 19.3 (1999)
Journal Articles
‘Dancing Autism: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and Bedlam’ Text and Performance Quarterly, 28:1 (2008) 192-205.
‘Scars in Disability Culture Poetry: Towards Connection’ Disability and Society, 23: 2 (2008) 141-150.
'The Rhetoric of the Wheelchair’ TDR: The Drama Review 51:4 (T196) (2007) 80-88.
'Performing Determinism: Disability Culture Poetry.'Text and Performance Quarterly . 27:2 (2007) 89-106.
‘Auto-Graphein or ‘The Blind Man’s Pencil’: Notes on the Making of a Poem' co-written with Stephen Kuusisto, Journal of Literary Disability, 1:1 (2007)
‘Outsides: Disability Culture Nature Poetry’ Journal of Literary Disability. 1:1 (2007)
‘Disability Culture Poetry: The Sound of the Bones. A Literary Essay’ Disability Studies Quarterly, 26: 4 (2006), E-journal.
'Moving Bodily Fantasies: Medical Performances and Modes of Communication' Dance Research Journal, 37:2 (2005), 73-88.
'Vibrant Agencies: Dance, Disability Embodiment and Phenomenology' Discourses in Dance 3:2 (2006) 21-31.
'Community Arts Practices: Improvising Being-Together'. Culture Machine: 8, 2006
'Affect and Blindness: Daredevil's Site/Sight'. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 23:2, 2006, 89-96.
'Helen's Eyes'. Women and Performance. 27 (2005), 81-84.
'Visions of Anatomy: Exhibitions and Dense Bodies'. differences (2004), 15:3, 123-156.
'Space Rules: Techno-Nomad Theatre' Body Space and Technology (2004).
'Landscaping: Spacings'. Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 13:2 (2003) 41-56.
'Korperliche Kommunikation: Behinderung und Tanzsprache (Bodily Communication: Disability and Dance-Language)', Jahrbuch fur Tanzforschung (Annals of Dance Research) 13 (2003), 159-170.
'Meeting Content: A Performance Research Collaboration.' w. Sophia Lycouris. Contemporary Theatre Review 12:4 (2002) 53-61.
'New Landscapes: Community Art, Video Process and Fantasies of Disability', Afterimage, The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism. 29:3, Nov/Dec. 2001, 24-25.
'Deconstructing Images: Performing Disability' Contemporary Theatre Review. Disability and Performance. Vol. 11, Part 3+4 (2001) 25-40.
'Memories of Screen-based Reading. A Jumping Point'. EnterText. 1:2 (2001) refereed e-journal
'Accessible Education: Aesthetics, Bodies and Disability.' Research in Dance Education. Winter 1:2. (2000): 119-131.
'Towards the Unknown Body: Silence, Stillness, Space in Mental Health Settings.' Theatre Topics. 10:2 (2000): 129-143. (Finalist for Gertrude Lippincott Dance Scholarship Award, 2000)
'Addenda? Contemporary Cyborgs and the Mediation of Embodiment.' Body, Space and Technology. 1:1 (2000) (refereed e-journal)
'Korper /Medien: Wahrnehmung, Korperlichkeit und das Bild.' (Body/Media: Reception, Physicality and the Image) Jahrbuch fur Tanzforschung (Annals of Dance Research) 10, April (2000), 227-243.
'Moving in the Cityscape: Performance and the Embodied Experience of the Flaneur.' New Theatre Quarterly. Winter (1999): 308-317.
'Traces of a Performance' poem/theory/sound, Ed. Alaric Sumner. Riding the Meridian 2 (1999)
'Performing Femininity: Frames, Agency and Disability Politics.' Disability Studies Quarterly 19.4 (1999): 330-332.
'Fin-de-siécles: Dandyism and Disabled Fashion' Disability Studies Quarterly. Changing Images of Disability. 19.3 (1999) 196-202
'Embodiment and Representation in Lesbian Dance Performance.' Journal of Lesbian Studies 2.2-3 (1998): 47-63. (Reprint of Book Article)
Chapters in Books
Articles in Peer-Reviewed Conference Proceedings, Professional Magazines, Dictionaries, Reviews (Selection)
Just Try Having None: Transmuting, Transcribing, Transfixing, Transfiguring, Transforming, Transcending Pain (performance review) Theatre Journal. 59:2 (2007), 303-305
‘Revisiting the Hospital: Disability Culture, Non-Confessional’ Valparaiso Poetry Review: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics. 8: 2 (2007), essay in poetry e-journal.
‘Re-Reading Siegfried Sassoon: Everybody Sang’ Arabesques Review. 2: 4 (2007), essay in e-journal.
'Writing from the Personal to the Communal: Community Poetry Exercises.'in: Best of the Pedagogy Papers 2007, AWP. http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/exemplarypapers_07.pdf , 30.
'The Poetry Slam'. Disability Pride Parade Chicago Website, History Section.http://www.disabilityprideparade.com/history/Parade06/petraspoetryslam.php
various articles on communityarts.net, for instance, Canoes in New Zealand: Coastal Mappings.
'Sirens: Performance Technology, Community Dance, and Disability Embodiment'. Congress for Dance Research, 2005.
3 Entries
on Medical Theatre, Disability Dance (1500 words each) and Art Therapy (400
words) Dictionary of
Disability Studies, Eds. David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, London: Sage.
'The Staff of Oedipus. Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece', Disability Studies Quarterly, Winter 2003.
'Aesthetic Access, the Public and the Community' Effecting Change Proceedings, 2004.
'Aesthetic Access: Disability Arts' Shifting Aesthetics Proceedings, University of North London, 2003.
'Placing Our (Disabled) Selves: Everyday Practices, Map-Making and Embodied Syntax', Congress in Dance Research Proceedings, November 2001.
'Looking Beyond Good Practice: Evaluation and Recording Community Based Arts Education.' (with Anna-Marie Taylor), 2001 - A Spatial Odyssey: Papers form the 6th International Conference on Lifelong Learning and the Arts. Nottingham: Continuing Education Press, 2001: 216-225.
'Geschlechterbilder' (gendered images in contemporary body art), SexchangeSex festival, Switzerland, website research area (August 2000)
'Digital Video Technology and Community Performance Work: Aesthetic Considerations.' Community Dance: Concepts and Issues. University of Surrey, August 1999: 29-36.
Journalist and foreign correspondent for general market publications in Germany and UK, including bi-monthly column 'Letters from London' and survey articles on early horror and sci-fi films for Moviestar and Television (Professional Sci-Fi/Horror Magazines, Germany)
'Silent Dances.' Laban Guild Movement and Dance Quarterly Magazine May (1999). (Report on research work in Vienna's Screendance archives funded with a Lisa Ullmann Travelling Scholarship)
'Early Cinema and Pornography.' Books in Wales May (1995).
'Cultural Politics and the Position of Dance Theatre.' Ballett International/Tanz aktuell 11 (1993).
11 Entries, Critical Dictionary of Film and Television Theory. Eds. Roberta Pearson and Philip Simpson. London and New York: Routledge, 2001
5 Entries, Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories. Ed. Lorraine Code. London and New York: Routledge, 2000
8 Entries, St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Eds. Tom and Sara Pendergast. St. James Press, Gale Research, 1999.
Researcher for the German section of Encyclopedia of European Film. Ed. Ginette Vincendeau. London: British Film Institute, 1997.
8 annual reviews of the annual Creteil International Festival of Women's Films, Paris, co-authored with Cathy Fowler, Screen, 1993-2000.
Reviews of academic books, UK, French and German conferences, exhibitions, film and theatre festivals and events for the on-line newspaper American Reporter.
Invited Lectures/Conference Keynotes (Selection)
Presentations and Panels at Conferences
‘The Anarcha Project: Touching Time’ Disability History Conference, San Francisco State University, August 2008
‘Tiresias’ Society for Disability Studies National Conference, New York City, June 2008
‘Disability Poetry’ Invited Panelist at Split This Rock Poetry Conference, Washington D.C., March 2008
‘Poetry, Performance, Disability,’ Modern Languages Association, December 2007
'Cultural Cycles, Crossings, Journeys: Disability Culture and the Reinvention of Poetic Myth', American Studies Association, Philadelphia, October 2007.
‘The Anarcha Project: Trauma, History, Performance’ Association for Theatre in Higher Education, New Orleans, July 2007.
‘Disability Culture and the Pleasure of Site’ Sedimentations, Rhode Island, May 2007
'Pain and the Archive'. Theatre Division Panel, Modern Language Association , Philadelphia , 2006.
'Wheelchair Rhetoricity' (Top Papers in Disability Studies panel), National Communication Association Conference , San Antonio, 2006
'Experimental Ethics: Disability Culture and the Technological Sublime' Trans Visual Culture , Madison , 2006
'Community Arts and Disability Culture'. Society for Disability Studies conference , Bethesda , MD , 2006
Panelist on Global Disability Culture Panel, Bodies of Work: Disability and the Arts Festival, Chicago, March 2006.
;Touching History', Performance Studies international 2005, Brown University, 2005.
'Sirens: Performance Technology, Community Dance, and Disability Embodiment'. Congress for Dance Research, 2005.
Landscape Art and Community Activism: Tracks. Arts Culture Nature, University of Washington Bothell, May 2005.
Community Performance. Strand Organiser, PSi 2005, Brown University, 2005.
'Sirens: Performance Technology, Community Dance, and Disability Embodiment'. Congress for Dance Research, 2005.
'Depression: The Melancholia of History'. Modern Languages Association, Philadelphia, December 2004. (session co-organizer and speaker)
'Migraine Art: Different Ways of Seeing'. Society for Science and Literature, Durham, October 2004. (session co-organizer and speaker)
'Mental Health Difference: Art, Aesthetics and Difference'. Depression: What is it Good for? University of Chicago, March 2004.
'Approaching the Body' College Arts Association. Seattle, February 2004.
'Virtual Movement: Visceral Affect and Dispersed Identification' Modern Languages Association, San Diego, December 2003.
Performing the World II, Montauk, November 2003.
'Sleeping Giants: Community Arts'. Sustainable Feminisms'. Macalester College, St. Paul, October 2003.
'Disability and Performance: Technologies of Otherness'. The Flesh Made Text. Greece, May 2003.
'Secret Communications and Rituals: The Corpse in Contemporary Media Culture'. International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. Florida, March 2003.
Aesthetic Access: Re-thinking Disability and the Social Field. 'Shifting Aesthetics: Disability and Performance. London, November 2002.
'Accessible Dance - Community Forms and Aesthetic Challenge'. National Dance Education Organization National Annual Conference, Providence, RI, June 2002.
'Moving Stillness, Hollow Places: Lingering over video practice', invited speaker on Still Art in Motion symposium, International Association for Philosophy and Literature: Intermedialities Conference, Rotterdam, Netherlands, June 2002.
Session Organiser 'Performance and Trauma', Narratives of Disease, Disability and Trauma Conference, Vancouver, CA, May 2002.
Session Organiser 'At the Scene of ... Disability and Performance' Performance Studies International, New York, April 2002.
Special Session Coordinator 'Performing Postmodern Bodies: Metaphor, Film and Physical Difference', own paper: 'Performing Uncertain Bodies: Cronenberg's Crash', MLA, New Orleans, December 2001.
'Aesthetic Access: Sharing Community Art', Performing the World: Communication, Improvisation and Societal Practice, Montauk, October 2001.
Organiser and Chair of Panel Session 'Translating Difference: Performance and Disability' own paper: 'Mapping Physicality: Translating Difference.' Performance Studies International 7: Transformation/Transition/Translation, Mainz, Germany, April 2001.
'Framing Body Spaces' Installation/Presentation at Digital Arts and Culture, Providence, RI, April 2001.
'In-Bodying: Disability, Performance and the Extended Body' Performative Sites: Intersecting Art, Technology, and the Body. Pennsylvania State University, USA, October 2000.
'Addenda? Disability, Performance and the Extended Body', Liminality and Performance, Brunel University, London, UK, 2000.
'Performativity and the Dancer.' Congress on Research in Dance Annual Conference: Choreographic Politics: Theatrical Representations of the Body. Claremont, California, US, 1999.
'Situating Digital Performance in the Community' Between Nature: Performance and Ecology conference, Lancaster, UK, July 2000.
'A Critical Perspective on Dance Education: Disability and Dancetheatre.' National Dance Teacher Association Annual Conference. Northampton, UK, 1999.
'Victim Art and the Aesthetics of Subversion: Bilderwerfer in Vienna' and participation on closing panel, MoMentUm I: Dancetheatre. Manchester, UK, 1999.
'Training Issues and Disabled Performers.' Access Denied? Conference. London, UK, 1999.
'Video and Movement: Encounters and their Documents.' Ways of Knowing Conference. Northampton, UK, 99.
'Towards a More Inclusive Aesthetic of Body Work: Disability and New Media' Association of Theatre in Higher Education Conference (ATHE) Toronto, Canada, 1999.
'Performativity and Disability.' Society for Disability Studies Conference. Washington, US, May 1999.
'Reading Women's Traumatic Bodies: Disabled Histories in Contemporary British Film Work.' Refiguring History: Between the Psyche and the Polis. University of Newcastle, UK, 1999.
'Redefining Performance and Identity Politics.' 5th Performance Studies International Conference 'Here be Dragons' Aberystwyth, Wales, 1999.
'Digital Video Technology and Community Performance Work: Aesthetic Considerations.' Community Dance: Concepts and Issues. Surrey, UK, 1999.
'Bodies in Space. Walter Benjamin and City Living in Contemporary Arts.' BLISS/Body Syntax. London, 1998
'Performance Theory and the Disabled Performer.' paper combining theory and performance, Society of Disability Studies Conference. Oakland, US, 1998.
'Disabled Dance.' Considered Unsightly. Leeds, UK, 1997.
'The Present Body: Narrativity and Filmdance.' Time and Value. Lancaster, UK, 1997.
'Bad Reputations: Mary Shelley and Lord Byron.' Romantic Reputations. Bristol, UK, 1996.
'Aufklärungsfilme: Bodies and Knowledge in German Cinema.' Visible Evidence. Cardiff, Wales, 1996.
'Genre and Women's Filmmaking.' Feminisms, Past, Present and Future. 9th International Women Studies Network Conference, Pontypridd, Wales, 1996.
'Contemporary Spectatorship and Gothic Gender.' Screen Conference, Glasgow, Scotland, June 1996.
'The Romantic Spirit: Early German Cinema.' Celebrating 1895. Bradford, UK, June 1995.
'Wheelchairdance: Dancevideos.' Screen Conference, Glasgow, Scotland, June 1995.
Other Contributions
Artistic Experience (Selection)
Directing (since 1998 as Artistic Director of The Olimpias
Directing for Camera
Guest Artist/Residencies
Visual Art
Creative Writing
Literature and Culture: Disability Culture
Topics in Performance Studies(Senior Seminar)
Academic and Artistic Community Service (Recent Selection)