Chapter 5: Can Rigorous Research be Art for the Masses? A Student/Teacher Debrief
Abstract
This scripted scene is set at an academic conference after a peer-reviewed national screening of Cripping: A Performance Ethnography of Disabled Identity. The conversation is designed to be performed aloud to grapple with tensions surrounding disability activism, storytelling performance, and ethnographic embodiment of Others in critical performance research. A Performance and Communication Studies professor/director and undergraduate student performer discuss a recent panel response to the performance ethnographic film created through applied-learning pedagogy. A disability activist and a Performance Studies scholar interject to voice the risks and possibilities of performance ethnographic film for social justice, critical applied-learning, and whether or not able-bodied performers can ethically embody the stories of disability marginalization without appropriation or exploitation of disabled people’s experiences.
Supplemental Multimedia
Liminalities 11.4 (2015) A performance of disabled identities based on ethnographic research conducted by Julie-Ann Scott, Ph.D. The actors in this film were in a communication studies class entitled, Performance Ethnography in Action: A Film Project. Throughout the process the students were required to reflect upon the ethical considerations surrounding embodying another and performing difference. The professor/director entered into the process with them, also portraying participants from her research project. The film is co-directed by Bill Bolduc and Frank Trimble.