The last 15 years has seen an explosion of studies that use cognitive science to understand theatre, whilst at the same time theatre-makers are using their artistic practice to address research question. This book looks at the current discourse around these emerging fields.

Representing Kink raises awareness about nonnormative texts and non-normative erotic practices and desires. It defines “kink” broadly, encompassing a range of “inappropriate” texts and practices and understanding it in frequent reference to nonnormative erotic fantasies and experiences. Kink is treated as both a set of practices as well as a category of texts at the nexus of subject and form. In addition to canonical texts that take up erotic and marginalized themes, the collection also studies forms that are themselves fringe and feature kink: taboo literature, self-published erotica, SM narratives, fan fiction, role-playing games, and other disavowed texts. The purpose of this study is to focus attention on the margins of an already marginalized subject, in order to highlight the extent to which nonnormative textuality and eroticism both shape and are shaped by our culture. It sheds light on a category of subjects that is at once mainstream in the form of texts such as Fifty Shades of Grey and yet nevertheless repeatedly disparaged and undertheorized. This book advocates for conversations about kinky texts that transcend dichotomous frameworks of good and bad, and normal and deviant, thinking instead in new, theoretically rigorous and flexible directions.

The prominence of ethnonational identities and movements is of increasing interest and concern in today's world. But the nature and importance of these identities remain ill understood. Ethnonational Identities breaks significant new ground by exploring the complex dimensions of ethnonational identity claims, their political mobilization, and a wide variety of comparative contexts in which they are found. Including case studies from the Québécois to the Mäori and from Kashmiri nationalism to interethnic competition in the Caribbean, it should be read by all those with an interest or involvement in the fields of ethnicity, nationalism, and identity politics.

Contributions by Amylou Ahava, Jeff Ambrose, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, Daniel P. Compora, Penny Crofts, Keith Currie, Erin Giannini, Diganta Roy, Hannah Lina Schneeberger, Shannon S. Shaw, Maria Wiegel, and Margaret J. Yankovich First published in 1986, Stephen King's novel IT forever changed the legacy of the literary clown. The subject of a TV miniseries and a two-part film adaptation and the inspiration for a resurgence of the evil clown figure in popular culture, IT's influence is undeniable, yet scholarship to date is almost exclusively devoted to the adaptations rather than the novel itself. Encountering Pennywise: Critical Perspectives on Stephen King's "IT" considers the pronounced cultural fluctuations of IT's legacies by centering the novel within the theoretical frameworks that animate it and ensure its literary and cultural persistence. The collection explores the ways the novel, so like its antagonist, replicates (or disavows) the icons of various canons and categories in order to accomplish specific psychological and cultural work. Gathering the work of scholars from diverse professional and disciplinary vantage points, editor Whitney S. May has curated an anthology that spans discussions of American surveillance culture, intergenerational conflict, the legacies of settler colonialism and Native American representation, serial-killer fanaticism, and more. In this volume, we read the protagonists' constellations of countermoves against Pennywise as productive outlines of critique effectuated by the richness of the clown's reflective power. The essays are therefore thematically arranged into a series of four categories of "counter"-countercurrents, countercultures, counterclaims, and counterfeits-where each supplies a specific critical lens through which to view Pennywise's disruptions of both culture and cultural critique.

Contributions by Amylou Ahava, Jeff Ambrose, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, Daniel P. Compora, Penny Crofts, Keith Currie, Erin Giannini, Diganta Roy, Hannah Lina Schneeberger, Shannon S. Shaw, Maria Wiegel, and Margaret J. Yankovich First published in 1986, Stephen King's novel IT forever changed the legacy of the literary clown. The subject of a TV miniseries and a two-part film adaptation and the inspiration for a resurgence of the evil clown figure in popular culture, IT's influence is undeniable, yet scholarship to date is almost exclusively devoted to the adaptations rather than the novel itself. Encountering Pennywise: Critical Perspectives on Stephen King's "IT" considers the pronounced cultural fluctuations of IT's legacies by centering the novel within the theoretical frameworks that animate it and ensure its literary and cultural persistence. The collection explores the ways the novel, so like its antagonist, replicates (or disavows) the icons of various canons and categories in order to accomplish specific psychological and cultural work. Gathering the work of scholars from diverse professional and disciplinary vantage points, editor Whitney S. May has curated an anthology that spans discussions of American surveillance culture, intergenerational conflict, the legacies of settler colonialism and Native American representation, serial-killer fanaticism, and more. In this volume, we read the protagonists' constellations of countermoves against Pennywise as productive outlines of critique effectuated by the richness of the clown's reflective power. The essays are therefore thematically arranged into a series of four categories of "counter"-countercurrents, countercultures, counterclaims, and counterfeits-where each supplies a specific critical lens through which to view Pennywise's disruptions of both culture and cultural critique.

The prominence of ethnonational identities and movements is of increasing interest and concern in today's world. But the nature and importance of these identities remain ill understood. Ethnonational Identities breaks significant new ground by exploring the complex dimensions of ethnonational identity claims, their political mobilisation, and a wide variety of comparative contexts in which they are found. Including case studies from the Quebecois to the Maori and from Kashmiri nationalism to interethnic competition in the Caribbean, it should be read by all those with an interest or involvement in the fields of ethnicity, nationalism and identity politics.