Masculinities Caught in Cultural Tides: An Autoethnographic & Performance Ethnographic Production

Masculinities Caught in Cultural Tides is the culminating project of COM 495: Applied Cultural Performance in partnership with the UNCW Quality Enhancement Project on Interdisciplinary learning in upper level undergraduate courses. The students learned the research method Performance Ethnography that draws from Communication Studies, Performance Studies, Anthropology, and Theatre. The students learned the design and ethics of the method while staging performance ethnographic data collected from 2018-2024 with individuals who live with seizure disorders, identify as gender expansive, and/or live with anxiety. The script is created through autoethnographic reflections from the director/professor of raising five children in contemporary culture and verbatim interview data that reiterates and deviates from her lived experiences. Thick descriptions from field work settings and reflective analysis are staged through multiple narrators. This is a early stage adaptation of a book project under contract with Temple University Press with Dr. Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock (professor/director) of the production.