This edited volume, Corporeal Politics: Gender and the Performance of Identity, interrogates the body as a contested site where power, gender, and cultural inscription converge across literary and theatrical landscapes. Through diverse studies spanning medieval mysticism to contemporary migration narratives, contributors examine embodiment as both constraint and catalyst for resistance. The collection reveals how performance, whether on stage, in poetry, or through everyday gestures, transforms corporeal existence into a political statement while interrogating the female body under patriarchal and colonial pressures. The volume demonstrates how shame, silence, and bodily displacement function not as passive symptoms but as active forms of refusal within oppressive structures. These scholarly investigations collectively argue that corporeal experience remains central to understanding power dynamics in both historical and contemporary contexts. Ultimately, Volume VIII: Corporeal Politics: Gender and the Performance of Identity affirms that how we inhabit, represent, and resist through our bodies continues to shape possibilities for justice and transformation.
