Maps the complexities of imaginative worldmaking in contemporary culture through an aesthetics of narrative performance.

Pick up a work of typical literary criticism and you know what to expect: prose that is dry, pedantic, well-meaning but tedious—slow-going and essentially humorless. But why should that be so? Why can’t more literary criticism have a political edge and be engaging and fast-paced? Why can’t it include drama, personal narrative, and even humor? Why can’t criticism become an artistic performance, rather than just a discussion of art? Art as Performance, Story as Criticism is Craig Womack’s answer to these questions. Inventive and often outrageous, the book turns traditional literary criticism on its head, rejecting distanced, purely theoretical argumentation for intimate engagement with literary works. Focusing on Native American literature, Womack mixes forms and styles. He is unafraid to combine meticulous research and carefully considered historical perspectives with personal reactions and reflections. The book opens with a short story, “The Song of Roe Náld,” in which a Native filmmaker loses control of his movie project, in part because of his homoerotic attraction to its star. The following chapters, or “mus(e)ings,” include original dramas, while others more closely resemble traditional literary criticism, such as essays discussing the lesser-known plays of Lynn Riggs and the stories of Durango Mendoza. Still other chapters defy easy categorization, such as the piece “Caught in the Current, Clinging to a Twig,” in which Womack interweaves historical analysis of the state of the Creek Nation in 1908 with a vivid recreation of the last day on earth of Creek poet Alexander Posey. Throughout the book, the author offers his take on such controversial issues as the Cherokee freedmen issue and the ban on gay marriage. In being different, Womack seeks to breathe new life into literary analysis and in-troduce criticism to a wider audience. Radical, groundbreaking, and refreshing, Art as Performance, Story as Criticism reinvents literary criticism for the twenty-first century.

Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion presents the aesthetics of narrativity in religious contexts by approaching narrative acts as situated modes of engaging with reality, equally shaped by the immersive character of the stories told and the sensory qualities of their performances. Introducing narrative cultures as an integrative framework of analysis, the volume builds a bridge between classical content-based approaches to narrative sources and the aesthetic study of religions as constituted by sensory and mediated practices. Studying stories in conjunction with the role that performative acts of storytelling play in the cultivation of the senses, the contributors explore the efficacy of storytelling formats in narrative cultures from ancient times until today, in regions and cultures across the globe. Contributors are: Stefan Binder, Arianna Borrelli, Markus Altena Davidsen, Laura Feldt, Ingvild Sælid Gilhus, Dirk Johannsen, Jens Kreinath, Isabel Laack, Martin Lehnert, Brigitte Luchesi, Bastiaan van Rijn, Caroline Widmer, Annette Wilke, Katharina Wilkens.

Since the inception of cinema in the late nineteenth century, filmmakers have employed a wide array of precursory aesthetic strategies in the conception and creation of their disparate works. The existence of these traditional antecedents have afforded filmmakers a diverse range of technical and artistic applications towards the construction of their respective cinematic narratives. Furthermore, the socio-political and cultural contexts in which films are conceived often inform the manner in which particular aesthetic sensibilities are selected and deployed. ‘Aesthetics and the Cinematic Narrative’ provides a concise historical survey of Aesthetics as a practical philosophical discipline and applies several of its underlying principles to the examination of filmic storytelling.

An analysis of Texan oral narratives that focuses on the significance of their social context. Although the tales are all from Texas, they are considered representative of oral storytelling traditions in their relationships between story, performance and event.