NEW BOOK – Cognitive Architecture of Critical Performance Studies

After many years going back to making academic books, to reworking old writings and co-writing new ones with my former professor and mentor Aleksandra Jovićević:

Cognitive Architecture of Critical Performance Studies (Architettura cognitiva e critica dei performance studies)
Aleksandra Jovićević & Ana Vujanović
Rome: Luca Sossella Editore, 2026
ISBN 979-12-5998-108-0

This book – published in Italian language and to an extent for the Italian context – offers a comprehensive introduction and critical reflection on performance studies, a relatively recent and interdisciplinary field that examines performance as a broad continuum of human and cultural actions, from ritual, play, and everyday social behavior to theatre, dance, and experimental artistic practices. Drawing on anthropology, sociology, philosophy, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and feminist, gender, queer, and cultural studies, the authors explore how performance operates not only in the arts but across social, political, and cultural life.

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The Collective Body of the Pandemic: From Whole to (Not) All

Ana Vujanovic, “The Collective Body of the Pandemic: From Whole to (Not) All”, e-flux journal, June 2021

Since the Covid-19 pandemic has had a global reach, spreading through various social strata and geopolitical contexts, nothing makes more sense than to revamp the social imaginary of our collective body. That body is in danger. It is under attack by other species. It is wounded. Its immunity has to be built. It has to be taken care of. It should heal. And it can only heal collectively. At the same time, nothing seems less probable. The wounds that the virus and its long aftermath inflict don’t hurt everyone equally. Immunity is not built equally either. Care is administered unevenly.

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