Violence against women in plays bywomen has earned little mention. This revolutionary collection fills that gap, focusing on plays by American women dramatists, written in the last thirty years, that deal with different forms of gender violence. Each author discusses specific manifestations of violence in carefully selected plays: psychological, familial, war-time, and social injustice. This book encompasses the theatrical devices used to represent violence on the stage in an age of virtual, immediate reality as much as the problematics of gender violence in modern society.

"Performing Gender Violence is a precious addition to the scholarly literature of the representation of violence on stage as it opens up new perspectives on the discrimination women still experience today in the United States. Fascinating in terms of content, Ozieblo and Hernando-Real's collection can also be defined as a good read since the articles are informed by the stylistic enthusiasm of the authors which adds to the quality of the book." - Journal of Contemporary Drama in English

"In an astute reconfiguration of scholarly conventions, this book, authored by female scholars, is a cross between an edited collection (as the cover suggests) and a co-authored volume . . . All in all, Performing Gender Violence: Plays by Contemporary American Women Dramatists is a thoroughly researched book, which eloquently blends theoretical considerations with close-reading analyses of specific plays. By combining examinations of canonical and recent works, the authors contribute to enlarging our knowledge of the astonishing wealth of contemporary American drama. Therefore, this book will not only be useful to feminists: it will become an invaluable research tool for any serious scholar wishing to study new developments in contemporary US theatre." European Journal of American Studies

Autorentext
BARBARA OZIEBLO Professor of American Literature at the University of Malaga, Spain.
NOELIA HERNANDO-REAL Assistant Professor of English and North American Literature at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, Spain.

Inhalt
Introduction; N.Hernando-Real & B.Ozieblo Violence against Women: Forms and Responses; M.Fernández-Morales , I.Pineda-Hernández , M.López-Rodríguez & B.Ozieblo Violence against Women in U.S. Theater; N.Hernando-Real & B.Ozieblo My Home, My Battleground: The Deconstruction of the American Family; N.Hernando-Real The Role of Female Bonding on the Stage of Violence; M.Narbona-Carrión A Stalker, a Serial Killer, and the Women Who Survived Them: Psychological Abuse as a Form of Gender Violence; M.L.Rodríguez The New Breast Cancer (Im)patient: Female Revolt against Biomedical Violence in US Drama; M.Fernández-Morales Survival Strategies in Recent Plays by African American Women Playwrights; I.Pineda-Hernández Documenting War: Theatrical Interventions by Emily Mann and Heather Raffo; I.Saal The Victim and the Audience's Pleasure: an Exploration of Carson Kreitzer's Self Defense and Stefanie Zadravec's Honey Brown Eyes; B.Ozieblo