Performance that Matters: Performance Ethnography as Critical Pedagogy

• In Event: Embracing and Embodying Resistant Pedagogies: Challenging the Constant of Conceptual Knowledge(s) Embracing Emergent, Embodied Knowing from Feminist, Critical, and Performative Perspectives

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the transition from ethnographic fieldwork to staging performance ethnography. I conducted fieldwork with McNair Scholars, a program that supports underrepresented students in higher education. The performance consisted of performance narratives from the students, and an interactive Boalian performance intervention. In the performance, I sought to magnify the experiences of marginalized students to an audience, where the audience was, then, affected by the performance and motivated to act and think in new ways that productively affect (directly or indirectly) disadvantaged students and to create empathy and social awareness. Ultimately, I argue that performance ethnography maintains the possibility to function as a form critical performative pedagogy.

Author

• Elena Esquibel, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale