Description: Men's fitness as a performance--from nineteenth-century theatrical exhibitions to health and wellness practices today
Review Quotes:
Winner of the David Bradby Monograph Prize
"Chow's scholarship and argument are unique and compelling, his theoretical frameworks are diverse and relevant, and his personal investment points to exciting ways in which auto-ethnography can bring the physical past to life." --Modern Drama
"A landmark contribution to the study of performance, physical culture and masculinity. Chow's interdisciplinary approach repositions physical culture not only as a set of bodily practices but as a historically situated and deeply theatrical masculinity performance. A treasure to read." --Theatre Research International
"An elegant fusion of critical theory analyses and historical research, bridging contemporary ideas of gender and race to past expressions of masculine strength. Chow rebukes the idea that the author must remove the personal "I" from academic writing. From the very first page on, Chow includes personal writings about his journey with fitness and weight training. A prime example of balancing a deeply personal connection to one's scholarship while maintaining rigorous academic standards and research." --Theatre Topics
"Chow rejects easy answers and paradigms, preferring instead to sit with the complexity rather than explain it away . . . Grounded in the archive, yet committed to privileging contemporary embodied experience, Muscle Works is ultimately an ethical task." --idrottsforum: Nordic Sport Science Forum
"A groundbreaking contribution to Theatre and Performance Studies . . . The work's theoretical sophistication, combined with its generous prose, makes possible new ways of understanding embodiment, race and queerness within performance. Muscle Works expands the methodological and conceptual horizons of the field." --David Bradby Monograph Prize panel
"Muscle Works is a theoretically sophisticated and historically rich study of the imbrication between fitness culture, performance, theatricality, and masculinity. Chow invites us to consider how fitness cultures reflect the (re)organization of the body within the orders of contemporary capital as he elaborates on a theory of the queer forms of corporeal being and being-with that emerges from within the fraught, overlapping ideological spaces of fitness and performance. Elegantly and compellingly written, this is an exciting and welcome new addition to the overlapping libraries of performance theory and queer theory." --Joshua Chambers-Letson, Northwestern University
"Drawing on his deep engagement with contemporary physical culture and its histories, Chow deftly traces the enmeshment of performance in practices of masculinity, fitness, and theatricality. The result is an original and compelling study that tests the boundaries of theatrical performance and the performance of masculinity in physical culture settings while modeling innovative ways of combining practice and archival research." --Fintan Walsh, Birkbeck, University of London