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Through critical autoethnography and personal narrative, this essay traces the academic and professional path of a first-generation student who grew up in an abusive household. The metaphor of “haunting” is used to explain the long-term psychosocial effects of intimate abuse. The author posits that teaching activities that acknowledge the ghosts of the past can help students recognize within themselves and others their own complex personhood. By approaching the classroom through a lens of haunting, the teacher can maintain a critical distance to their students that may help teachers better address student needs.

This essay identifies four performance frames tour guides employ to orient tourists to the site. Each frame is presented through a composite character, constructed through participant observation o...

This essay, based on six months of participant observation fieldwork at Masada National Park, offers an experimental tour of the site. The main text is an amalgamation of Youth Israel Experience Tours while the footnotes serve as a dialectical response, commenting on and critiquing the tour structure and post-tourist practice. This essay suggests that the meaning and significance of place, particularly while on tour, is found in the relationship between tourists more so than in the mythical stories told about the site.

Living history performances attempt to create “authentic reproductions,” presentations that aim to present the past in the present as accurately as possible. Such performances have a tendency to present a single interpretation of history as the only interpretation possible. This article analyzes the performance Masada Live by the Asphalt Theatre company as an alternative living history performance. Masada Live uses theatricality to call attention to the constructed nature of the performance, creating a space for a more nuanced and critical understandings of a history.

In this essay, we look at how three traditional forms of performance identified by Walter Benjamin function in the digital age. With greater accessibility to the means of production, digital performances can be created by just about anyone. The performances we analyze show how Benjamin's conception of the storyteller, the novelist, and the charlatan can thrive in online environments. While the performances of the storyteller and the novelist suggest new possibilities for online performance, the performance of the charlatan demonstrates the danger of not engaging with/in online performance.

Courses: A single class exercise, for use in Group Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Communication and Culture, Basic Course, Relational and Organizational Communication, and any course that addresses individual and group identity.Objectives: After completing this activity, students should be able to (a) critically assess their own presentation of identity; and (b) explain how some parts of their identity contribute to their membership in social groups while other parts remain separate from their membership in those groups. Students will work with metaphors to understand and explain their identity.