Performing Masculinity (working title)

1.记者诺拉·文森特（Norah Vincent）2006年的畅销书《白手起家的男人：我伪装成男人的一年》（Self-Made Man：My Year Disguised as a Man）表明，公众对性别转变的持续迷恋，以及一种性别的成员能够令人信服地“通过"另一种性别的成员。然而，关于当代女性变装的历史，仍然很少有认真的研究或文献记录。文森特在她的书中简要地提到，她从一位“变装王”朋友那里得到了一些提示，但对这个词却没有提出质疑，好像它一直存在--与更知名（也更广泛研究）的“变装皇后”相对应。“事实上，这个词最早可以追溯到20世纪90年代初，当时学术和艺术界都非常关注性别颠覆的问题。变装王表演的先驱和主要传播者之一是黛安·托尔;一位行为艺术家，在此之前的十年里，她一直在纽约的另类艺术界发展自己的作品。她的变装作品植根于舞者对身体能力的理解，其含义比文森特的要复杂得多，也更微妙，值得比迄今为止更详细的关注。目前的研究，与托尔本人密切合作进行，将是第一次详细的尝试，记录和语境化她的工作批判。它将试图在舞台上和生活中女性对男性的变装的悠久历史中找到变装王表演的出现，同时也展示其与过去二十年文化发展的特定相关性。在这样做的过程中，这项研究还将提出更广泛的问题，即男性气质本身的构成是一套表演行为。妇女在多大程度上能像男子一样有效地居住在这些地方？（事实上，男人本身仅仅是文化理想化的男性气质模板的“模仿者”吗？）托尔的表现工作是特别重要的，这样的辩论，因为-而不是简单地诉诸于那种通常与拖王性能的男性刻板印象的campy渲染-她自己从事一个正在进行的实际研究过程中的具体变化，在不同的文化背景和地点之间的男性气质的建设。3.应用和好处通过适当地将黛安·托（Diane Torr）作为表演实践者的工作背景化并进一步传播，这项研究将为围绕性别和表演的持续批评和流行辩论做出重大贡献。她的变装表演和工作坊经常被主流媒体报道（从《Time Out》到《Elle》再到《华盛顿邮报》），但很少有学术界对她的作品进行认真的关注--而且很少有学术界对她的作品进行认真的关注，有时甚至是误导和不准确的。这本书结合了对她作品的批判性反思和文献记录，将使它所提出的戏剧和文化问题成为广大读者关注的焦点。

1. ContextThe best-selling success of journalist Norah Vincent's 2006 book 'Self-Made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man' demonstrated the continuing popular fascination with gender transformation, and with the ability of members of one sex to 'pass' convincingly as members of the other. Yet there remains little serious research into, or documentation of, the contemporary history of female-to-male cross-dressing. Vincent notes briefly in her book that she picked up tips from a 'drag king' friend, but leaves that term unquestioned, as if it has always been in existence - a counterpart to the better-known (and more extensively researched) 'drag queen.' In fact, the term dates from as recently as the early 1990s, and from a period in which there was much attention -- both scholarly and artistic -- to questions of gender subversion. One of the pioneers and chief disseminators of drag king performance was Diane Torr; a performance artist who had been developing her work in New York's alternative arts scene for a decade before this. Her drag work, rooted in a dancer's understanding of the body's capabilities, is far more complex and nuanced in its implications than Vincent's, and is deserving of more detailed attention than it has to date received.2. Aims and ObjectivesThe current research, conducted in close collaboration with Torr herself, will be the first detailed attempt to document and contextualise her work critically. It will seek to locate the emergence of drag king performance within a long history of female-to-male cross-dressing both on stage and in life, while also demonstrating its specific relevance to cultural developments of the last two decades. In doing so, the research will also raise broader questions about the constitution of masculinity itself as a set of performed behaviours. To what extent can these be inhabited as effectively by women as by men? (Indeed, are men themselves merely 'impersonators' of culturally idealised templates of masculinity?) Torr's performance work is particularly significant to such debates, because -- rather than simply resorting to the kind of campy rendition of masculine stereotypes often associated with drag king performance -- she has herself engaged in an ongoing practical research process into the specific variations in constructions of masculinity between different cultural contexts and locations. 3. Applications and BenefitsThis research will contribute significantly to ongoing critical and popular debates around gender and performance, by properly contextualising and further disseminating Diane Torr's work as a performance practitioner. Her drag performances and workshops have frequently been written up in the mainstream press (from Time Out to Elle to the Washington Post), but there has been little serious scholarly attention to her work - and what little there has been is at times misleading and inaccurate. The proposed book's combination of critical reflection on, and documentation of her work will bring the theatrical and cultural issues it raises into focus for a broad readership.