Performance studies is the academic field concerned with the study of performance in any of its various forms. The term 'performance' is broad, and can include artistic and aesthetic performances like concerts, theatrical events, and performance art; sporting events; social, political and religious events like rituals, ceremonies, proclamations and public decisions; certain kinds of language use; and those components of identity which require someone to do, rather than just be, something. Consequently, performance studies is interdisciplinary, drawing from theories of the performing arts, anthropology and sociology, literary theory, and legal studies.
Performance Studies has been challenged as an emerging discipline. Many academics have been critical of its instability. As an academic field it is difficult to pin down; either that is the nature of the field itself or it is still too young to tell. There are, however, numerous degree granting programs that train researchers being offered by universities. Some have referred to it as an "inter discipline" or a "post discipline."
Read more about Performance Studies: Academic Programs in Performance Studies, Performance Studies and Performance Art, Chronology of Developments in The Field, Controversies
Famous quotes containing the words performance and/or studies:
“True balance requires assigning realistic performance expectations to each of our roles. True balance requires us to acknowledge that our performance in some areas is more important than in others. True balance demands that we determine what accomplishments give us honest satisfaction as well as what failures cause us intolerable grief.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“The conduct of a man, who studies philosophy in this careless manner, is more truly sceptical than that of any one, who feeling in himself an inclination to it, is yet so over-whelm’d with doubts and scruples, as totally to reject it. A true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction; and will never refuse any innocent satisfaction, which offers itself, upon account of either of them.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)