New book announcement

Keith Sawyer (ksawyer who-is-at artsci.wustl.edu)
Mon, 18 May 1998 15:43:45 -0500

I wanted to let the members of XMCA know that a book I have
edited--*Creativity in Performance*--is now available from Ablex. It's a
broadly interdisciplinary volume, with chapters by ethnomusicologists
(research on jazz improvisation, Nepalese drumming), linguistic
anthropologists (studies of everyday conversation and of situated ritual
verbal art), psychologists (including two XMCA participants: myself and
Eugene Matusov), one philosopher and one anthropologist of dance.

The common themes share a great deal with the central issues of XMCA,
including:

1. A focus on process instead of product;
2. The relationships between text and performance;
3. Processes whereby performances emerge from group symbolic interaction;
4. The indeterminacy and contingency of performance, especially of
improvisation;
5. The collective social processes of performance;
6. Cross-cultural differences in performance;
7. The central role of participatory learning in performance traditions.

If you are interested in more information, please visit my web site at the
address below.
R. Keith Sawyer
Assistant Professor
Department of Education
Washington University
Campus Box 1183
St. Louis, MO 63130
314-935-8724

http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~ksawyer