Disney Parks and the Construction of American Identity with Jennifer A. Kokai and Tom Robson (Lexington Books, 2024)
From New Books in Communications · 01:07:12
Show by Marshall Poe
Writing in a time of heightened political anxiety–and when accusations of nationalism, authoritarianism, and proto-fascism have increasingly divided Americans into factions– the authors use their influential performance studies-based 'tourist as actor' framework to unpack the ways that Disney parks and their guests co-create performance of implicit Americanness in the 21st century. Disney Parks and the Construction of American Identity: Tourism, Performance, Anxiety (Lexington Books, 2024) argues that the roles that guests choose to perform-- accepting, declining, negotiating, or overwriting scripts offered to them by the Disney theme park experience-- ultimately reveals much about the nature of the contemporary United States. Focusing primarily on Walt Disney World in Florida, and using case studies on music, geography and ecology, sports, families, and politics, these chapters illuminate the always complicated and often contradictory presentations and performances of America within Disney parks in the deeply contested twenty-first century.Jennifer A. Kokai is director of the School of Theatre and Dance and the Endowed Chair of the Holloway and the Brit at the University of South Florida.Tom Robson is assistant teaching professor in Purdue University's Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts program.Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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