Lengel takes the reader on a journey from India and Romania, where women preserve cultural rituals through mourning songs, to South Africa, where the body is a site of struggle for meaning and power in contemporary dance. This volume examines the interrelationship of cultural and national identity, ethnicity, gender, performance, and lived experience. It offers an understanding of how music and dance function within the lives of its performers and audiences, and how they embody meaning, carry social value, and act as a vehicle for intercultural communication.

This book analyzes the communicative impact of women's cultural products and creative practice and creates links across disciplines such as communication, cultural studies, and performance studies. Contributors have lived, researched, and performed in the United States, Australia, Belize, Barbados, Canada, China, England, India, the Pacific, Romania, and Yemen. Their chapters address women's creative performance as a means of political and ideological expression.

The author addresses the importance of women's dance, music, and other performing arts as vehicles for intercultural communication.

About the Author

LAURA LENGEL is Associate Professor, School of Communication Studies, Bowling Green State University. She began researching women and performance as a Fulbright Scholar in Tunisia. She is also the author of Culture and Technology in the New Europe (Ablex, 2000).

Book Information
ISBN 9780275982409
Author Laura Lengel
Format Hardback
Page Count 312
Imprint Praeger Publishers Inc
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Plc