Social Aesthetic and Medical Implications of Performing Shame

<p><em>Performing Shame</em> shows how simulations of shame by North American writers and artists have the power to resist its withering influence.</p><p>Chapter 1 analyses the projects’ key terms: shame performance and empathy. Chapter 2 probes the book’s key terms in light of a real-world study of an empathy device that aims to teach the public what it feels like to be disabled. Chapter 3 analyses how theatre intervenes in the practice of medicine via standardized patient actors who engage in role play to enhance medical students’ empathy for patients coping with shame. Chapter 4 moves from the clinic to the street to examine how The Raging Grannies’ public performances contest ageist constructions of older women’s bodies and desires. Chapter 5 shifts further from the bedside to the book by exploring Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel <i>Fun Home</i> which challenges the shame projected onto homosexuals. Bringing the study full circle the final chapter offers close readings of the stories of Alice Munro; like empathy devices her texts restage scenes of shame to undo its malevolent spell.</p><p>This book will be of interest to scholars in theatre and performance studies health humanities gender studies queer studies literary studies disability studies and affect studies.</p>