Acts of Conspicuous Compassion: Performance Culture and American Charity Practices Contributor(s): Moeschen, Sheila C. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0472036556 ISBN-13: 9780472036554 Publisher: University of Michigan Press OUR PRICE: $28.66 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: January 2016 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Performing Arts | Theater - History & Criticism - Social Science | People With Disabilities - History | United States - 19th Century |
Dewey: 792.097 |
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 6" W x 8.9" (0.75 lbs) 224 pages |
Themes: - Topical - Physically Challenged - Chronological Period - 19th Century - Chronological Period - 20th Century |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: "Acts of Conspicuous Compassion" investigates the relationship between performance culture and the cultivation of charitable sentiment in America, exploring the distinctive practices that have evolved to make the plea for charity legible and compelling. From the work of 19th-century melodramas to the televised drama of transformation and redemption in reality TV s "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," "Acts of Conspicuous Compassion" charts the sophisticated strategies employed by various charity movements responsible for making organized benevolence alluring, exciting, and seemingly uncomplicated. Sheila C. Moeschen brokers a new way of accounting for the legacy and involvement of disabled people within charity specifically, the articulation of performance culture as a vital theoretical framework for discussing issues of embodiment and identity dislodges previously held notions of the disabled existing as passive, objects of pity. This work gives rise to a more complicated and nuanced discussion of the participation of the disabled community in the charity industry, of the opportunities afforded by performance culture for disabled people to act as critical agents of charity, and of the new ethical and political issues that arise from employing performance methodology in a culture with increased appetites for voyeurism, display, and complex spectacle." |