W Benjamin Myers
Biographic Data
| ID | 179960 |
|---|---|
| NAME | W Benjamin Myers |
| GIVEN NAMES | W Benjamin |
| FAMILY NAME | Myers |
| SIGNATURE | MYERS W B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Moscow State University of Technologies and Management named after K.G. Razumovskiy |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Future Needs Friction
This essay frames the Journal of Autoethnography’s special issue on generative artificial intelligence (AI). The authors synthesize three ways contributors conceptualize the role of AI, specifically large language models (LLMs), in autoethnographic practice: collaborator, interlocutor, and tool. Each configuration surfaces distinct possibilities and risks, which are detailed. The authors conclude by critically examining how LLMs reduce the uncert…
Contemporary Autoethnography Is Digital Autoethnography
Autoethnography has become legitimized through its ability to connect culture to personal experiences. This legitimization has occurred alongside a titanic shift in communication made possible by digital technology, which has rapidly transformed, multiplied, and mediated the ways through which we engage one another. This essay explores and exemplifies the necessity of autoethnography to evolve in concert with the ways our lives have become inextr…
The Élan Vital and Sacred Research: Questioning the Spiritual Imperative in Performance Studies
In this essay I examine calls within the discipline of performance studies to understand the work of performance as spiritual or sacred. Using the concept of the élan vital, I explain how such calls are often lacking in explanatory power, negate the body, and are problematically conflated with virtue/moral behavior. I provide a sustained analysis of Norman Denzin's Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture to demonstr…
The Critical Lede: New Media and Ecological Balance
As co-hosts of the podcast The Critical Lede (TCL), we find ourselves at a moment where new media projects are bursting onto the scene of not only communication/ performance studies but also all fields of academe. That we find ourselves in the midst of this explosion calls for reflexivity on the potentials that new media projects open as well as problematics that might ensue as we sort out how to keep our traditional print/stage heritage vibrant …
The Performative Possibilities of New Media
We understand new media as performative - a medium that is an active participant in a political dialogue. It is political in its iterability; it performs, over and over, passing as/with information. We see this in our Facebook NewsFeeds and ReTweet of Tweets long gone. In this forum, we hope to show how new media scholarship can be purposefully enacted within performance studies (perhaps marking a slippage ... perhaps not) to work towards larger …
(Performance Is) Metaphors as Methodological Tools in Qualitative Inquiry: Introduction
In his germinal essay, “Of Caravans and Carnivals: Performance Studies in Motion” Dwight Conquergood (1995) uses the compelling metaphor of a caravan to describe performance studies; a “commitment to praxis, to multiple ways of knowing that engage embodied experience with critical reflection ... a caravan: a heterogeneous ensemble of ideas and methods on the move” (pp. 139–140). This expanded discussion on the relation between performance and met…
Performance is a Placebo: Symbolic Healing on Material Bodies
Performance in/as Qualitative Inquiry: A Conclusion
The Placebo as Performance: Speaking Across Domains of Healing
In this article I explore the placebo and the placebo effect from a performance-studies perspective. I use this examination to argue for the placebo as a possible dialogic starting point between performance studies and qualitative health scholars. Using Lock and Scheper-Hughes' concept of three bodies (the individual body, the social body, and the body politic), I explain how the placebo as performance opens dialogue by speaking across these thre…
Beyond disability: A dialogue with members of the Improbable Theatre Company
The Improbable Theatre Company (ITC) was created by and for theatre artists with disabilities. Based on interviews of members from the company, we discuss tensions between the disability movement and arts professionals, the correlation between arts and politics within the disabled community, autonomy, advocacy, and control. We examine the challenges and opportunities that the theatre presents to participants and audiences. We conclude that throug…
Straight and White: Talking With My Mouth Full
By using straight and white teeth as a metaphor for a straight and White identity, the author reflects on how this identity is performed, maintained, and often problematic. Using literature about identity performance, three different voices speak to and from straight and White identity. Using irony by blending arrogance and ignorance in the voice of the straight and White author, these voices illustrate the cracks in straight and White performanc…
Straight and White: Talking With My Mouth Full
By using straight and white teeth as a metaphor for a straight and White identity, the author reflects on how this identity is performed, maintained, and often problematic. Using literature about identity performance, three different voices speak to and from straight and White identity. Using irony by blending arrogance and ignorance in the voice of the straight and White author, these voices illustrate the cracks in straight and White performanc…
The Performative Possibilities of New Media
We understand new media as performative - a medium that is an active participant in a political dialogue. It is political in its iterability; it performs, over and over, passing as/with information. We see this in our Facebook NewsFeeds and ReTweet of Tweets long gone. In this forum, we hope to show how new media scholarship can be purposefully enacted within performance studies (perhaps marking a slippage ... perhaps not) to work towards larger …
The Placebo as Performance: Speaking Across Domains of Healing
In this article I explore the placebo and the placebo effect from a performance-studies perspective. I use this examination to argue for the placebo as a possible dialogic starting point between performance studies and qualitative health scholars. Using Lock and Scheper-Hughes' concept of three bodies (the individual body, the social body, and the body politic), I explain how the placebo as performance opens dialogue by speaking across these thre…
The Élan Vital and Sacred Research: Questioning the Spiritual Imperative in Performance Studies
In this essay I examine calls within the discipline of performance studies to understand the work of performance as spiritual or sacred. Using the concept of the élan vital, I explain how such calls are often lacking in explanatory power, negate the body, and are problematically conflated with virtue/moral behavior. I provide a sustained analysis of Norman Denzin's Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture to demonstr…
Contemporary Autoethnography Is Digital Autoethnography
Autoethnography has become legitimized through its ability to connect culture to personal experiences. This legitimization has occurred alongside a titanic shift in communication made possible by digital technology, which has rapidly transformed, multiplied, and mediated the ways through which we engage one another. This essay explores and exemplifies the necessity of autoethnography to evolve in concert with the ways our lives have become inextr…
Straight and White: Talking With My Mouth Full
By using straight and white teeth as a metaphor for a straight and White identity, the author reflects on how this identity is performed, maintained, and often problematic. Using literature about identity performance, three different voices speak to and from straight and White identity. Using irony by blending arrogance and ignorance in the voice of the straight and White author, these voices illustrate the cracks in straight and White performanc…
Beyond disability: A dialogue with members of the Improbable Theatre Company
The Improbable Theatre Company (ITC) was created by and for theatre artists with disabilities. Based on interviews of members from the company, we discuss tensions between the disability movement and arts professionals, the correlation between arts and politics within the disabled community, autonomy, advocacy, and control. We examine the challenges and opportunities that the theatre presents to participants and audiences. We conclude that throug…
(Performance Is) Metaphors as Methodological Tools in Qualitative Inquiry: Introduction
In his germinal essay, “Of Caravans and Carnivals: Performance Studies in Motion” Dwight Conquergood (1995) uses the compelling metaphor of a caravan to describe performance studies; a “commitment to praxis, to multiple ways of knowing that engage embodied experience with critical reflection ... a caravan: a heterogeneous ensemble of ideas and methods on the move” (pp. 139–140). This expanded discussion on the relation between performance and met…
Performance is a Placebo: Symbolic Healing on Material Bodies
Performance in/as Qualitative Inquiry: A Conclusion
The Placebo as Performance: Speaking Across Domains of Healing
In this article I explore the placebo and the placebo effect from a performance-studies perspective. I use this examination to argue for the placebo as a possible dialogic starting point between performance studies and qualitative health scholars. Using Lock and Scheper-Hughes' concept of three bodies (the individual body, the social body, and the body politic), I explain how the placebo as performance opens dialogue by speaking across these thre…
The Critical Lede: New Media and Ecological Balance
As co-hosts of the podcast The Critical Lede (TCL), we find ourselves at a moment where new media projects are bursting onto the scene of not only communication/ performance studies but also all fields of academe. That we find ourselves in the midst of this explosion calls for reflexivity on the potentials that new media projects open as well as problematics that might ensue as we sort out how to keep our traditional print/stage heritage vibrant …
The Performative Possibilities of New Media
We understand new media as performative - a medium that is an active participant in a political dialogue. It is political in its iterability; it performs, over and over, passing as/with information. We see this in our Facebook NewsFeeds and ReTweet of Tweets long gone. In this forum, we hope to show how new media scholarship can be purposefully enacted within performance studies (perhaps marking a slippage ... perhaps not) to work towards larger …
The Élan Vital and Sacred Research: Questioning the Spiritual Imperative in Performance Studies
In this essay I examine calls within the discipline of performance studies to understand the work of performance as spiritual or sacred. Using the concept of the élan vital, I explain how such calls are often lacking in explanatory power, negate the body, and are problematically conflated with virtue/moral behavior. I provide a sustained analysis of Norman Denzin's Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture to demonstr…
Contemporary Autoethnography Is Digital Autoethnography
Autoethnography has become legitimized through its ability to connect culture to personal experiences. This legitimization has occurred alongside a titanic shift in communication made possible by digital technology, which has rapidly transformed, multiplied, and mediated the ways through which we engage one another. This essay explores and exemplifies the necessity of autoethnography to evolve in concert with the ways our lives have become inextr…
The Future Needs Friction
This essay frames the Journal of Autoethnography’s special issue on generative artificial intelligence (AI). The authors synthesize three ways contributors conceptualize the role of AI, specifically large language models (LLMs), in autoethnographic practice: collaborator, interlocutor, and tool. Each configuration surfaces distinct possibilities and risks, which are detailed. The authors conclude by critically examining how LLMs reduce the uncert…
Sociology (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Theatre and Performance Studies (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Anthropology (3 works) · Diversity and Impact of Dance (3 works)