Drama Trauma: Specters of Race and Sexuality in Performance, Video and Art

In this engaging cross-disciplinary study, Timothy Murray examines the artistic struggle over traumatic fantasies of race, gender, sexuality, and power. Establishing a retrospective dialogue between past and present, stage and video,Drama Traumalinks the specters of difference that haunt Shakespeare's plays with recent political projects in performance and video. Murray provides close readings of cultural formations as diverse as Shakespearean drama, the Statue of Liberty, contemporary feminist plays, African-American performance, and feminist interventions in video, performance and installation. The texts discussed include plays by Ntozake Shange and Amiri Baraka, installations by Mary Kelly, performances by Carmelita Tropicana, as well as productions of King Lear, Othello and Romeo and Juliet.