Fundamental Femininity in Performance: An Artist's Reflection on "Jesus Camp Queen"

Authors

  • Angela J Latham Governors State University

Abstract

In this Artist’s Reflection, Latham personally, theoretically, aesthetically, and culturally contextualizes her renderings of “Christ-like femininity” in Jesus Camp Queen (JCQ), an autoethnographic performance about her formative experiences as a member of a fundamentalist Christian sect. Her reflections on JCQ also speak more broadly to the ways in which public rituals that celebrate a highly codified feminine ideal—and thereby reify binary gender roles—create profound internal dissonance, even or perhaps especially within those whose performances most fully embody the idealized role of femininity in which they have been cast.

Author Biography

Angela J Latham, Governors State University

Angela J. Latham is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in the south suburbs of Chicago. She is the author of Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and other Brazen Performers of the American 1920s (Wesleyan University Press). Her essays have appeared in Theatre Journal, Text and Performance Quarterly, and Liminalities.

 

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Published

2017-05-07

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2017): Performing Religion

Section

Materials

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