Remapping Genre through Performance: From ‘American’ to ‘Hemispheric’ Studies

Performance as a genre allows for alternative mappings, providing a set of strategies and conventions that allow scholars to see practices that scripted genres might occlude. Like other genres, performance encompasses a broad range of rehearsed and codified behaviors, such as dance, theater, music recitals, sports events, and rituals. A performance lens allows scholars to look at acts, things, and ideas as performance. Looking at America as performance might explain why it is difficult to approach it as a disciplinary field of study. What might the shift in genres-from the scripted genres associated with the archive to the live, embodied behaviors that are the repertoire of cultural practices-enable? This essay proposes that an analysis of the performance of America might allow scholars to rethink not only their object of analysis but also their scholarly interactions.