Introduction

‘Stunt’ began to be used as a word for ‘feat’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but during this period, its meaning remained fluid and it described a wide array of acts. Stunt stories were justified by the journalists’ actions, but also emphasised publication as event, bolstered by a wave of popular newspapers which presented themselves as active players in public life. This chapter analyses the meaning and etymologies of ‘stunt’, before viewing stunts through the lens of Performance Studies. It describes the historical context of New York and the ways in which economic, sociopolitical and cultural values were being challenged and re-evaluated. The critical framework—animated by theorisations of precarity, liveness and aliveness, and public life—is then developed and justified. The chapter explores the research archive and place it in the context of New York’s cultures of spectacle and the scholarship addressing them.