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This overview essay introduces three others being spotlighted in the 2005 issue of New England Theatre Journal. In November 2004, a collection of scholars working with the American Society for Theatre Research met at the Society's annual conference to take part in a new research group entitled, "The Diasporic Imagination." The group gathered to discuss questions, challenges, and issues related to the growing field of Diasporic Studies, and to investigate how this field intersects with the complicated histories of theatre and performance we encounter in our scholarship and in our classrooms.
Introduction
In his fascinating collection of essays, 1492: The Poetics of Diaspora, literary theorist John Docker proposes that scholars almost inevitably approach the field of Diasporic Studies by trying to understand "Identity and belonging, or not belonging, through cultural forms: through representation as in genre, myth, novel, poem, allegory, parable, anecdote, story, savings, metaphors, puns, riddles" (Docker vii). Docker's work focuses on the way in which literary texts (and their performance) offer contemporary scholars a means of understanding how diasporic communities use texts as building blocks for creating communities. Anthropologist Grey Gundaker proposes an alternate approach that focuses on the "vernacularization" of the diaspora, exploring the contrast and occasional conflict between the written expressions of the diasporic imagination and the complicated language of signs and signifiers that mitigate its performance in a culture. Gundaker argues that only in the "gap" between the performance of a text and the performance of an alternate language of signs and symbols does the vernacular expression of a diasporic identity emerge (Gundaker 5-7). These scholars are two of the many (working in diverse arenas outside theatre) who have contributed to the growing field of Diasporic Studies over the past several decades.1 As the field has grown, so has its obvious relevance and interest to theatre scholars. Much fascinating scholarship has appeared in recent years that calls scholars' attention to the importance of considering the notion and function of the diaspora in both text and performance. For example, in 1998 Theatre Journal dedicated a special issue to "Theatre, Diaspora, and the Politics of Home." In that issue, editor Loren Kruger commented on the multiple and evolving meanings of the word "diaspora," whether in the context of the Jewish...