Performance and Professional Wrestling
- Submitting institution
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The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- BCHO7
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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10.4324/9781315676401
- Publisher
- Routledge
- ISBN
- 9781315676401
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- ‘Performance and Professional Wrestling’, co-edited by Broderick Chow, Eero Laine (University at Buffalo, SUNY), and Claire Warden (Loughborough), is the first edited volume to consider professional wrestling explicitly from the perspective of theatre and performance studies. Chow, Laine, and Warden shared responsibility for curation and developmental editing, supporting an interdisciplinary range of authors (including scholars in media studies, sociology, literature, and sports studies) to engage with theatre and performance concepts while employing methods from their own fields. The volume offers a critical reassessment of pro wrestling, structured around seven sections: audience, circulation, lucha (wrestling in Hispanophone contexts), gender, queerness, bodies, and race. Relatively short chapters of c.5000 words ensured the inclusion of the widest range of material and perspectives. Chow, Laine, and Warden’s introduction argues that pro wrestling’s liminal status between sport and theatre means it embodies disciplinary debates between theatre studies and performance studies. Chow’s contribution to the introduction included translation of sociologist Christophe Lamoureux’s work on pro wrestling from the original French. This commitment to moving past Anglophone perspectives is reflected in the rest of the volume, which, unlike previous books, touches upon all four major geographical sites of pro wrestling: US/Canada, Latin America, Britain and Europe, and Japan. In addition, Chow contributed the 4790-word chapter “Muscle Memory”, which draws on extensive archival and historical research to connect modern wrestling to the physical culture spectacles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ‘Performance and Professional Wrestling’ was positively reviewed in six peer-reviewed journals. Since its publication, there has been significant growth in research on pro wrestling, including the formation of the Professional Wrestling Studies Association (PWSA). The book’s impact among non-academic readers and wrestling fans is evidenced by the fact that it is the sole publication cited in the definition of ‘professional wrestling’ on Wikipedia.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -