Performing flight : from the barnstormers to space tourism / Scott Magelssen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Magelssen, Scott, 1974- author.

Contributor:

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), publisher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Flight--History.

Flight.

History.

Space tourism.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (184 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2020.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

This book brings performance and flight together in conversation as a means to explore the ways in which human heavier-than-air aviation and space travel have been fundamentally connected to images, gestures, narrative tropes, and performative acts. Performance has shaped the enterprise of flight in public perception and consciousness and in many cases has guaranteed its success as modes of entertainment, travel, research, and warfare. From the early professional aerial entertainers known as barnstormers, whose name was drawn from the itinerant theatre troupes of the nineteenth century, to the emerging industry of space tourism, which now uses performative means to cement its importance as both manifest destiny and an escape route from a failed planet, performance and flight have been inextricably linked in ways that have heretofore been underexamined.

Contents:

Chapter 1 "Making Uncle Tom's Cabin into a Hangar": Bessie Coleman, Barnstorming Aviatrix p. 17

Chapter 2 Hiroshima, the Enola Gay, and the Performance of the Atomic Age p. 35

Chapter 3 The Pilot Voice: Communities of Practice and the Chuck Yeager Meme p. 53

Chapter 4 Inventing the American Astronaut p. 71

Chapter 5 The Space Tourist: A New New Theory of the Leisure Class p. 91

Chapter 6 9/11, Flight, and Performance p. 110.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

9780472126859

0472126857

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.