Amanda Stojanov, MFA, assistant professor in the Department of Communication, recently published “A Womxn Destroyed” in a special issue of “Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies,” showcasing the diversity and complexity of the digital performance of literature, edited by Lyndsay Michalik Gratch and Patricia A. Suchy. Established in 2005, Liminalities is a peer-reviewed, open-access multimedia journal created to meet three key needs in the field of performance studies including increasing opportunities for sharing peer-reviewed work, offering a platform for multimedia texts and projects that don’t fit traditional print formats, and fostering international access and engagement.
In her introdcution, Gratch explores the significance of Stojanov’s work, noting, “The rise of metahuman avatars—digital representations of humans created using advanced 3D modeling software—has also created exciting opportunities for the performance of literature in digital spaces.”
Gratch describes “A Womxn Destroyed” as a performed response to the “Monologue” in Simone De Beauvoir’s “The Woman Destroyed” (1969). “The performance features a metahuman avatar that Stojanov designed and performed with in real time on the social media platform Twitch. The work anticipates similar future productions, where others are invited to create a metahuman and perform their response to the text. This metahuman performance opens a space to reflect on the ways that digital embodiment can reshape performance praxis, while also animating feminist discourse about gender and digital technologies. Finally, the work raises questions about the relationship between the metahuman performer, the human performer, and the audience and offers new ways to think about presence and identity.”
Read the full introduction to the special issue: Introduction to Special Issue on The Digital Performance of Literature | by Lyndsay Michalik Gratch