Janet O'Shea, Professor of Dance, University of California - Los Angeles

Janet O'Shea is Professor of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. Author of At Home in the World: Bharata Natyam on the Global Stage and the co-editor of the Routledge Dance Studies Reader, 2nd edition, her research focuses on corporeality, interdisciplinary exchange, and the politics of everyday life. She is a practitioner of Filipino martial arts, jeet kune do, Brazilian jiu jitsu, kickboxing, and empowerment self-defense.

"This book does an impressive job of providing examples of self-defense training as work and as play, including the differences between men and women. This is an excellent read for those interested in sport psychology and sport sociology." - CHOICE

"Risk, Failure, Play is a masterly exploration of conflict, movement, and mind-body connection. The book builds from sharply observed personal experience to cultural analysis, using the sensations and emotions of martial arts practice to anchor a rigorously constructed theoretical approach. Drawing on sources as varied as Elaine Scarry and Dan Inosanto, O'Shea gathers the many threads encountered in her training into a compelling read that links the domains of dance and combat." - Dr. Susan Schorn, University of Texas at Austin, author of Smile at Strangers and Other Lessons in the Art of Living Fearlessly

"Risk, Failure, Play offers a compelling discussion of the social value of combat sports, foregrounding their personally edifying potential and the role such processes may play in building more civil, respectful, and egalitarian approaches to conflict and disagreement. O'Shea carefully avoids overstating her analyses, reminding readers that 'play' fights can themselves become violent and that positive, transformational outcomes of sports are never guaranteed. She ultimately argues that, while socially supportive risk-taking and failure-embracing play can't cure all of our personal or social ills, they provide the chance to learn skills that might help us do so. In this way, O'Shea brings her engaging, insightful and neatly-written analysis to a fittingly optimistic conclusion." - Alex Channon, Martial Arts Studies