Introduction

Abstract

The book you are holding is not only an innovative interdisciplinary study of performance magic, but also an experiment in collaborative teaching and learning. This experiment took place at Muhlenberg College, the small liberal arts college that is the institutional home of the editors as well as many other contributors to this volume. In its encouragement of interdisciplinary scholarship and creative pedagogies, Muhlenberg has given us the space not only to produce new knowledge but also to consider how and in what ways knowledge is produced. This book, for all its wide-ranging perspectives, historical breadth, and cultural diversity, was produced locally, by an interdisciplinary, crossdepartmental, college-wide collaborative effort. By the end, this project had drawn together scholars from many institutions and magicians from all over the world; to tell the story of this book is therefore to describe a series of intellectual encounters and transformations as unexpected as those in any magic trick.