Two-Part Courses: A hyphen indicates a full-year course with credit granted only for completing both terms. A comma indicates credit is granted for completing one term.
Performance Studies: Issues and Methods
H42.2617* Required for incoming students. 4 points.
Survey of performance studies. Topics include: What constitutes performance
studies? What does "interdisciplinary" mean in practice? What are the "central"
fields from which we draw? What are the limitations and advantages of pluralism
over eclecticism? What is the burden of critical heritage on this field?
M.A. Writing Seminar H42.2618* Required of all M.S.
students after completion of 24 points. Staff. 4 points.
Terminal course for the M.A. degree. Examination of research methods and
writing strategies for substantial scholarly projects in the field.
The Dissertation Proposal
H42.2301* Prerequisite: 76 points of
completed course work. Required for doctoral students. 4 points.
Emphasis on problems of research, writing, and editing as they apply to the
doctoral dissertation. Each student prepares a dissertation proposal as a class
project.
Aesthetics of Everyday Life
H42.1040*
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. 4 points.
The formation of vernacular culture in New York City--how people shape their
expressive behavior in relation to the conditions of their lives. Debates on
the nature of vernacular culture and its creative and emancipatory potential in
relation to mass media and the centralization of power in modern society.
Tourist Productions
H42.1041* Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. 4 points.
How tourist settings, events, and artifacts are produced, interpreted, and
consumed; the "production of culture" for the consumption of the "other"
(guest, stranger, tourist, expatriate, pilgrim); tradition and authenticity and
the synthetic nature of culture; the process of aestheticizating and
commiditizing history, politics, and aesthetics of tourist cultural
production.
African Performance: Figuring African Cultural
"Contagion" H42.2023 Browning. 4 points.
This course allows for an examination of the evolution of thought on
diasporic culture. It considers the increasing importance and prevalence
of ways of configuring the "spread" or dispersal of national performative
practices. Considers the history of Western accounts of African diasporic
culture that rely on the figure of disease and contagion. Specifically
looks at the recent associations made between AIDS and African diasporic
cultural practices such as spirit possession. The conflation of economic,
spiritual, and sexual exchange has allowed for the positing of
"infectious" diasporic culture as a chaotic or uncontrolled force that can
only be countered by military or police violence. African diasporic
culture itself has responded with ironic inversions of the contagion
figure.
African Performance: Cosmos, Community, Continuity, and
Change H42.2023 Browning. 4 points.
Explores the major
genres or performative traditions, including ritual, festival, initiation,
storytelling, and occasional performances found in Africa; how they are
organized to reflect social and spiritual bonding, and how this is
mediated in performance and the beauty it creates. Analysis of contexts,
texts, spaces, and expressive techniques adopted in the presentation of
the self and other as expressed by the individual/community in
performance.^MFactors that account for the continuity and change in th e
performative structures, such as^Mcolonialism, and how they are performed
are explored. Relevant material is presented from African literature,
history, and religion.
Body Politics: Foucault and the Production of Self
H42.2032 Munoz. 4 points.
Close examination of the notion of askesis as an art and science
working on the individual self and its relevance and utility for
theoretical projects and paradigms that include critical discourses like
performance studies, queer theory, critical race theory, feminism,
post-colonialism, and social theory. Also, the relation of askesis to
"governmentality," "the repressive hypothesis" and "genealogy," three
other central terms from Foucault's project. The texts at the center of
this class include all three translated volumes of The History
of Sexuality, Discipline and Punish, individual essays, interviews,
as well as readings from Blanchot, Bordieu, deCerteau, Delueze, Derrida,
Guattari, Le Doeuff, and Nietzsche.
Orature: The Roots of Modern Afrian Theatre H42.2050*
Ng~ug~i. 4 points.
Modern African theatre, in European and African languages, varies in form,
content, and^Mdegree of social involvement and draws heavily on the oral
artistic tradition widely known as orature. Orature, now used to mean oral
literature, also carries the noti on of the integrated character of art
forms. The three-section course looks at the form and content
of contemporary African theatre and its contribution to 20th-century
theatre. First part: explores^Mmain features of orature--song, dance,
riddle, proverb , tales, narratives, myths, etc. Second part: examines
work of contemporary African playwrights (e.g., Wole Soyinka, Osofisan,
J.P. Clark, Mohammed ben Abdallah, Tess Onwuem, Francis Imbuga, John
Ruganda). Third part: focuses on the current trend to return to African
languages as the primary linguistic base of African theatre and utilizes
the resources of orature about works in African languages to comment on
the contemporary social scene and in the process creates a genuinely
modern African theatre with enormous possibilities for growth in different
directions. Texts used are in English or in English translation.
Performance and Resistance in African Prison Narratives
H42.2056 Ng~ug~i. 4 points.
Examines the prison autobiography of a number of writers from Africa. Prison is
seen as a stage, a confined space, and the adversaries, the state and the
writer, as actors performing to a national and an international audience.
Performance of the state is part of its repressive practices and the prisoner's
part of the resistance. Questions whether the literary and political prison
autobiography constitutes a separate genre from other autobiographies and the
extent of the contribution of performance to its identity.
Experimental Performance: Interculturalism and the
Avant-Garde H42.2060 Schechner. 4 points.
Limited to graduate students with strong acting, directing, and research
interests in African, Asian, and Euro-American traditions of performance.
Western avant-garde theories of performance largely drawn on the ontology,
cultural practices, and performative concepts of non-Western societies. The
transformation of these concepts within the praxis of the avant-garde results
in performance theories with intercultural implications. Sources,
transformations, and results of these theories examined. Focus on Gordon Craig,
Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook, and Richard
Schechner. Their theories are critically analyzed in terms of their ontological
and performative connectedness to the sources or the absence thereof.
Comparative knowledge gained of the concept of art, the individual/self, and
community in Eastern and non-Western performance contexts.
Topics in Critical Theory: Fetishism and the Social
H42.2100 Joseph. 4 points
Exploration of the performance of the Social. How money, bodies, and
desire travel, exchange and gain value. The central idea is to
interrogate the unconscious and political formations of the social body
of
the State. By examining contemporary theories of the body, theories of
the state and urban social theory, the course explores meaning, context,
and linkages between fetishism and the Social. As part of shaping a
conversation, considers the themes of commodity aesthetics in the broader
context of the Social. Texts include Elizabeth Grosz, Elias Canetti,
Chatal Mouffe, Guy Debord, Vaclav Havel, Friedrich Durenmatt, W.E.B.
Dubois, Seyla Benihabib, Michelle Le Doeuff, Ranajit Guha, Uma Tuma,
C.L.R. James, Julius Nyerere, and Jena-Joseph Goux. Films includ
Hyena, Garbage Boys, and Memories f
Underdevelopment.
Performance Spaces H42.2109* McNamara. 4
points.
Theory and history of physical theatre (architecture, stage design, lighting,
costume) from the earliest days to the present. Discussion extends beyond
conventional theatre forms to include traditional staging methods associated
with folk and popular entertainment, approaches to the use of space, and
radical solutions to problems of scenography. One class, devoted to Broadway
theatre, includes a tour.
Time and Performance H42.2115 Phelan. 4
points.
Readings in philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Hegel) are combined with
and set against readings in psychology (Freud, Lacan) in order to understand
the importance of temporality--especially repetition--in the construction of a
performance aesthetic. Emphasis is on repetition.
European Performance: Seminar on Antonin Artaud H42.2202
Weiss. 4 points.
Considers the totality of Artaud's
production--theory, theatre, poetry, cinema, radio, drawings,
letters--following the conviction that his early, more famous works must
be reinterpreted, as he himself suggests, in the light of his ultimate
artistic efforts. Special attention given to the roles of voice and body,
specifically in regard to the problematic of the psychopathology of
expression.
The History of Avant-Garde Performance
H42.2209* Joseph. 4 points.
Beginning with Wagner, the course traces the history of avant-garde performance
through symbolism, expressionism, futurism in Italy and Russia, surrealism, and
the Bauhaus; it concludes with the writings and productions of Artaud. Emphasis
is on theory and the relationship between theatre and the plastic arts.
Special Project: Postmodern Dance, from Merce Cunningham to the
Present H42.2215 Staff. 4 points.
Experimentalists since the early 1960s have redrawn the boundaries of dance
performance and redefined our ideas of who is a dancer, what is dance movement
and choreography, what a dance should look like, and the role of the audience.
This course considers the unfolding of new dance over the past three decades,
from the innovations of Merce Cunningham and the Judson Dance Theater, to
postmodern formalism, neo-expressionism, new vaudeville, and the populist work
of the 90s. Reading and discussion, viewing of videotape, and studio exercises
based on new-dance concepts.
Special Project: Sex in Public H42.2216 Munoz. 4
points.
Examination of different cultures of dissident sexuality,
mostly within the U.S., and analysis^Mof the ways in which these cultures
produce, often through performance, publicity. Focus o the role of race,
ethnicity, and class within these different commun ities. Topics includ
various modes of sex work (hustling, stripping, go)go dancing, drag, and
transgende performance), S/M, histories of sex in public spaces such as,
but not limited to, baths and tearooms, activism around AIDS and HIV,
'zine culture and pornography and anti*pornography debates. Queer and
feminist social and legal theories are among the primary theoretical
resources.
Special Project: Eastern Influences on Western Theatrical
Dance H42.2216 Jowitt. 4 points.
This course examines the ways Western choreographers and dancers have been
influenced by Eastern culture, how they perceived the Orient, and what prompted
the transformations that Western artists exerted on what they borrowed.
Includes examination of exotic themes in romantic and turn-of-the-century
ballets; the sumptuous oriental ballets mounted by Diaghilev's Les Ballets
Russes, and the attempt to create "authentic" if fabulous Eastern atmosphere;
the use of masks; the influence of Zen Buddhism and the martial arts, etc.
History of Dance I, II H42.2230*,
2250* Jowitt. 4 points each semester.
A study of the function of dance as art and ritual, social activity, spectacle,
and entertainment through a survey of ethnic dance forms and the history of the
European tradition.
History of Black American Popular Performance
H42.2231* Staff. 4 points.
Reading and research in the history and development of African American
theatre, performance, and entertainment from the colonial era to the present.
The course includes readings in history, listening to oral histories on tape,
as well as lectures by instructors and invited guests at the Hatch-Billops
Archives of Black Cultural History.
Sexuality on Stage: Introduction to Feminist Theory and
Performance H42.2236 Phelan. 4 points.
Seminar in
advanced feminist theory of representation. Focus varies. Topics include:
realism and feminism; relation between sexism, racism, and homophobia;
the symbolic mother and representation.
Gender and Performance: Seminar in Advanced Feminist
Theory H42.2238* Phelan. 4 points.
Seminar in advanced feminist theory of representation. Focus varies.
Topics include realism and feminism; relation between sexism, racism, and
homophobia; women and autobiographical performance.
Gender and Performance: Feminist Ethnography H42.2238
Browning. 4 points.
Examines a variety of ethnographic and
theoretical texts to approach the notion of feminis ethnography. Begins by
questioning the very possibility of staking a sexual) political
position in a cross)cultural context. Close readings of a wide array of
ethno graphies from diverse^Mhistorical moments are aimed at specifying
our ideas about what constitutes feminist praxis at the level of cultural
observation and participation as well as at the level of writing. Why have
women ethnographers--professional and nonprofessional--been overlooked by
the "new ethnography" movement?
Gender and Performance: Sexualities, Spiritualities
H42.2238. Phelan. 4 points.
Investigates the remarkable similarities between epiphanies associated
with sexual awakenings and epiphanies associated with spiritual
awakenings. Topics include narratives of "new lives" and the performances
they inspire, the theological underpinnings of psychoanalysis,
poststructuralism (especially Derrida), and contemporary performance. The
class is run as a proseminar. Student papers are presented in class and
taught along with relevant readings. Students must have a background in
feminist and/or queer theory and some familiarity with spiritual and
theological discourse.
Yvonne Rainer: From Dance to Film
H42.2242 Phelan. 4 points.
After the premiere of The Man Who Envied Women in 1986, J.
Hoberman wrote that
Rainer is "the most important" woman filmmaker in the avant-garde since Maya
Deren. Rainer's work is of particular interest to performance critics because
it is so overtly conscious of the "live" in relation to the filmed.
American Performance H42.2303* McNamara. 4
points.
The institutional operation of theatre and other performance production in the
United States; texts, performance techniques, production methods, economics,
audience taste, and response.
Broadway: Its History and Impact
H42.2309 McNamara. 4 points.
Examines the concept of an urban theatre district, the history and impact of
Broadway from 1825 to the present, theatrical innovations, significant
productions, and performance.
The Politics of Culture H42.2312* Joseph. 4
points.
Introduction to some of the questions arising at the intersections of Marxism,
psychoanalysis, and postcolonialism. Using the critical social theorists of the
Frankfurt School as a point of departure, examines concepts of "the modern":
the social, the state and history, identity and difference by juxtaposing
alternative traditions of thought such as the new social movements, the
diaspora, and colonialism.
Topics in Performing Culture: Performing Brazil H42.2320
Browning. 4 points.
Introduction to the history of Brazilian nationalist discourse and its
relation to a variety of performative events, from African and indigenous
syncretic religious ceremonies to the telenovela. Critical readings of the
canonical historical, sociological, and anthropological accounts of the
development of Brazilian culture inform examinations of popular
music, religious and secular dance, political discourse, sports, and
television.
Queer Theories: Performance and Performativity H42.2360
Munoz. 4 points.
Examines the formation of queer theory in the U.S. academy with a special
interest in evaluating its utility as a mechanism for explicating and
analyzing the experiences and politics of various dissident sexualities
within a phobic public sphere. Topics include: how different queer
theories challenge, subvert, and critique unproblematized understandings
of the term "theory," connections and ruptures between theoretical
discourses like queer performativity and queer performances, how queer
theory and queer performance help different communities and individuals
enact "self," the current split between a branch of queer theory that
understands itself as social theory and the dominant modality of
queer theory that has been categorized as cultural and literary studies,
the recent wave of queer theory anthologies, and the theoretical and
cultural production of queers of color and their location in gay and
lesbian studies.
Contemporary American Identities: Publicity and Performance in
Minoritarian Culture H42.2385 Munoz. 4 points.
This seminar examines modalities of cultural
production and performance which enact minoritarian identities within an
often hostile dominant public sphere. Focusing on the U.S. and the nations
and communities that form its borders, the seminar meditates o n the ways
in^Mwhich contemporary American identities are created, possessed, and
managed. By engaging psychoanalysis and other narratives of subject
formation the course scrutinizes the sites of identification,
counter)identification, and disidentification that are available to
minority subjects within contemporary American culture. Exploring the rich
body of work by U.S. and German theorists of publicity and the public
sphere, the course considers the ways in which counterpublics and networks
of alternative publicity are forged by minoritarian subjects. Also calls
upon recent work in African American studies, queer theory, U.S.
Latino cultural criticism, and postcolonial studies.
Experimental Performance Since 1960
H42.2402* Schechner. 4 points.
A survey of trends in experimental performance during the last thirty years.
Beginning with John Cage, action painters, and the early Living Theatre, the
course relates significant movements such as Happenings, Performance Art, the
varieties of group theatres of the 1960s and beyond (Performance Group-Wooster
Group, the Grand Union, Mabou Mines, San Francisco Mime Troupe), political and
guerilla theatre, postmodern dance, Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, Karen
Finley, WOW, and other feminist performance and theory, and up-to-date
performances occurring in New York during the months that the course is
taught.
Imprisonment and the Dramatic Imagination
H42.2415 Phelan. 4 points.
The social imagination that assumes that pleasure can be punitive ("guilty
pleasures") and guilt measurable creates an uneasy alliance between the
institutions that market pleasure and those that "produce" pain (most
obviously, but not exclusively, the penal system). Topics include: the Western
spectator's relative passivity; the promise of theatrical "escape"
(particularly in comedies and musicals) that is contingent on a failure of
(psychological/philosophical) movement; the repetition of the theatrical
script; the orderly progression from writer ' director ' performer ' spectator
as the paradigm for the transmission of the theatrical text; and how these
features serve to underline the degree to which theatre and imprisonment are
the products of a similar social imagination.
Autobiography and the Performing Self
H42.2420 Phelan. 4 points.
The "presentation of self" in performance, including ideas of self, address,
and presentation. "Performance art" is the relentless fascination with the
reconstitution of an expressible self seen in relation to historical
precedents.
Topics in Theories of Representation: Memories, Territories, and
the Visual H42.2450* Joseph. 4 points.
The notions of history, memory, and territory as played out through the
performative and the visual, to organize questions related to the problems of
representation. Explores how contemporary cultural production, theory,
politics, and the market engage each other. Considers the numerous developments
related to performance and the visual that are going on at the intersections of
gender, Marxism, colonial discourse, and critical theory. Begins with issues
related to historiography and moves rapidly through the realms of performance,
art history, film, communications, popular culture, anthropology, and
photography.
Topics in Theories of Representation: "Race"/Body/Politics
H42.2450* Joseph. 4 points.
Focus on critical reading and discussion of selected performances and visual
texts that deal with the "race-d" body, within the specific historical and
social contexts in which they are produced. Considerable attention to the
examination of problematics related to the production, distribution, and
reception of those narratives in contemporary U.S. cultural politics. Issues
explored are the constructions of ethnicity, the intertextual relationship
between fictional and performative discourse and other modes of minoritarian
cultural practices, the relationship of these narratives to hegemonic, or
dominant discourse, and the manner in which politics, gender, sexuality, and
class often disrupt a seemingly totalizing racial discourse.
Topics in Theories of Representation: Introduction to the New
Ethnography H42.2450 Joseph. 4 points.
Focuses on the notions of history, memory, and territory as performed
through theories of ethnography and the visual, to organize questions
related to the problems of representation. Explores how contemporary
cultural production, tourism, politics, transn ational processes, and the
market shape each other. Considers the conceptual and representational
strategies employed by anthropologists, cultural workers, social
theorists, and historians, among others, to familiarize students with the
numerous developments related to theories of representation that are
taking place at the intersections of gender, Marxism, psychoanalysis,
colonial discourse, and critical theory. Also considers some of the
intersections of the new ethnography, beginning with issues related to
historiography and moving rapidly through the realms of performance, art
history, film communications, popular culture, anthropology,
and photography.
Dance and Movement Style I H42.2516* Staff. 4
points.
An approach to understanding movement style and communication. Studies and
exercises to develop skills of observing and connecting the distinctive
features of a movement event. The course includes nondance movement and
improvisational problems, writing exercises, viewing of films and live
performances from diverse traditions, and readings in anthropology, behavioral
research, dance, and the other arts.
Dance and Movement Style II
H42.2517* Prerequisite: Dance and
Movement Style I or permission of the instructor. Staff. 4 points.
Advanced studies in movement observation and analysis. Classwork is directed
toward recognizing the elements of style, structure, and content in movement
events. Through improvisation, observation, and writing exercises, students
develop their skills of describing movement behavior and understanding what it
communicates. Stresses the relationship between nonverbal activity and other
aspects of a performance. Considers problems of research and fieldwork in an
unfamiliar culture and discusses ways of discovering a context for social,
ritual, and performative events.
Studies in Dance: Seminar in World Dance
H42.2504* Staff. 4 points.
Addresses the question of how to frame the idea of "world dance" within a
survey course. Objective is to develop one or more syllabi for introducing this
vast subject to students. Considers various ways of breaking down the subject:
geographical or chronological scans; cross-cultural views of subject matter
function, stage conventions, sources; types of body training, theatrical
genres; and other possible ways of referencing the spectrum of world dancing.
Considers questions of representation--how world dance is portrayed internally
and for foreign export--and how world dance forms are seen both inside and
outside their own culture, by critics, scholars, audiences, and dance
practitioners. Discusses ethical and practical issues encumbering efforts to
open up the Euro-American canon that normally dominates the dance history
curriculum in this country. Reading will include anthropological, historical,
and aesthetic views of world dance; views world dance as portrayed on film and
video.
Studies in Dance: Political Aspects of Afro-Brazilian
Dance H42.2504 Browning. 4 points.
This course begins with a theoretical consideration of questions pertinent
to all dance ethnography: How can one intellectualize the body's motion?
What can one learn from a culture in which that motion is already
perceived as an intellectual activity? More specifically, in
Afro-Brazilian religious dance, how does "spirit possession" make us
reconsider the notion of choreography and the creative capacity of the
individual dancer? And in popular dances such as the samba, how do sexual,
racial, and national identity get expressed? We examine four
Afro-Brazilian dance forms: the samba (the so-called Brazilian national
dance); the choreographies of the candomble (the predominant syncretic
African religion practiced in Brazil); capoeira (a Kong-derived
dance/martial art); and the multifarious and everchanging popular dances
of the nation's largest participatory carnival in Salvador, Bahia.
Students are encouraged to explore Afro-Brazilian dance as it is
practiced and performed in New York City.
Isadora Duncan and Hellenism H42.2519 Jowitt. 4
points.
Course situates Duncan in the intellectual and artistic climate of her time and
discusses the sources of her art as well as her innovations. Course examines
how Duncan and her contemporaries interpreted nature, science, the art of the
past; what she drew from these sources; and how they shaped her dancing.
Influences surveyed include popular theatre, physics, the "new" gymnastics,
Delsarte, Walt Whitman, Rousseau, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Greek art and
literature.
Seminar in Dance Theory H42.2530 Staff. 4
points.
Examination of theoretical writings on dance from the 18th century to the
present time to discover where our ideas and assumptions about Western
theatrical dance originate.
Theories of Directing I, II H42.2601,
2630* Schechner. 4 points each semester.
Different approaches to directing with emphasis on the work of Stanislavsky,
Brecht, and Meyerhold compared to the more recent work of Grotowski, Brook,
Wilson, Foreman, Akalaitis, Breuer, Schechner, LeCompte, and other contemporary
directors. Rather than document the work of all these directors, we identify
certain basic concerns with regard to staging, actor training,
audience-performer interaction, environment and stage design, and the
sociopolitical function (or nonfunction) of theatre.
Performance Theory: Praxis, Rasa, Hana
H42.2602* Schechner. 4 points.
Examines in depth and comparatively the performance theories of Aristotle,
Bharata, and Zeami. Readings (in translation) include theoretical and
historical texts, commentaries, and plays (Greek tragedy, Sanskrit drama, noh,
and kabuki). Videos of the relevant forms and offshoots therefrom are shown and
discussed. Discussion, reports, and a final paper and/or performance project.
Ritual, Play, and Performance
H42.2604 Schechner. 4 points.
Ethnological, anthropological, psychological, and aesthetic theories of play
and ritual examined in terms of specific ritual enactments such as rites of
passage, ritual theatre/dance/music, shamanism, and other forms of charismatic
healing. A special emphasis on the ritual process and creativity. Examples
drawn from Asia, Europe, the Americas, Oceania, and Africa.
Asian Performance H42.2608* Schechner. 4 points
each semester.
First term: India. Second term: Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia,
Indonesia). Third term: Tibet, China, and Korea. Fourth term: Japan and the
Pacific Rim. A comparative study of various Asian traditions--classical and
modern, aesthetic, and ritual--with a special emphasis on the performance
theories enunciated by Asians. Close readings of selected Sanskrit, Chinese,
Korean, Japanese, and Indonesian texts (in translation) dealing with performer
training, performance conventions, reception, and critical evaluation. Although
students are encouraged to take all four terms of this course in sequence,
exceptions will be made with consent of the instructor.
European and American Performance Theory of the 20th Century
H42.2610* Schechner. 4 points.
A careful look at newer theories of the West. These theories are examined in
relation to each other. Theorists whose works are examined include Aristotle,
Horace, Brecht, Burke, Langer, Goffman, Pavis, Turner, Jung, Derrida,
Grotowski, and Artaud.
Fieldwork of Performance/Performance of Fieldwork
H42.2611 4 points.
Intensive introduction to cross-cultural fieldwork as an important locus for
both the study of performance and the performance of ethnography. The central
focus is on the historical shifts from an empiricist view of fieldwork as a
politically neutral process of collecting facts to its construal as a complex
and dialogic process of negotiation that draws upon as well as creates
politically charged narratives.
Possession in Performance H42.2666* Joseph. 4
points.
Possession, a powerful performative metaphor for being taken over by an Other,
is a reality of ritual life in most parts of the world. Investigates the
performative and theoretical implications of possession through readings,
discussions, and audio-visual means. Major issues are religion,
oppression/repression, gender, colonialism, and representation in selected
cultures.
Belief in Performance: Syncretism as an Aesthetic Model
H42.2668 Browning. 4 points.
Broadly speaking, this course addresses the problem of the expression
of religious or cosmological belief in secular performances. While
non-Western culrtures often explicitly work out spiritual issues in
public performance contexts, Western secular performances have
generally been read as expressions
of aesthetic or political beliefs. The course examines the ways in which
non-Western performance traditions and their incorporation into
contemporary U.S. performance practice force a reconfiguration of the
role of cosmology and spiritual belief in the arts.
Poststructuralist Studies in Performance
H42.2677* Phelan. 4 points.
Introductory course in "continental" theory. Readings: Freud, Lacan, Barthes,
Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, deCerteau.
Postcolonial Theatre and Theory: Gender, Culture, Nation
H42.2695* Joseph. 4 points.
Explores issues of gender, "race," class and nation/nationality in postcolonial
performance. Notions of dominant and marginal discursive practices are at issue
through plays and performances that address the colonial/postcolonial
experiences. Traces some of the ways in which theatrical interventions
complicate, critique, and subvert essentialist conceptions of culture,
nationhood and "race."
Writing About Performance H42.2705* Staff. 4
points.
Students examine and practice various types of writing about performance:
reporting, interviewing, features, criticism and analysis, essays, and extended
research articles. Emphasis is on learning how to develop provocative ideas and
present them skillfully and responsibly.
Criticism Seminar H42.2715* Staff. 4
points.
Methods and applications of critical analysis, with particular attention to
observing, synthesizing, and commenting on live performance work. Students
explore several critical modes as practiced by contemporary arts writers. They
experiment with their own critical writing in response to dance, theatre, and
music performances.
Performance Composition H42.2730* Staff. 4
points.
Practical workshop designed to develop autobiographical material for
performance. Acting and writing exercises are adapted with the aim of
making art out of everyday experiences. Course includes field trips to
observe rehearsals of other performance artists. Limited enrollment.
Radio, Recording, and Sound Art H42.2752 Weiss. 4
points.
An interdisciplinary course which studies the practical and theoretical
aspects of sound (voice, music, noise, silence) within modernism. These
investigations are methodologically supported by work in the fields of
linguistics, psycholinguistics, philosop hical aesthetics, Freudian
metapsychology, rhetoric, and structural anthropology. The guiding
thematic is the much neglected history of radiophonic art, especially in
the context of the transformation of^Mperformance by recording the
montage.
Festivity and Performance H42.2800* Amankulor. 4
points.
Festivals are celebrated to mark significant passage of time and to recall
crucial events of the past. Festivals function as unique environments and
possess formal structures including performative activities that are communally
authored or sponsored. Explores the relationship between festivity and
performance using the theory of festivity and festival performance. Seeks to
explain why performances that occur within the sacred or secular contexts of
festivity are marked by an unusual communal effervescence, euphoria,
inversions, contemplation, excess, and affirmation as well as suffused with
important expressive cultural symbols, icons, mythologies, and rituals.
Selected festivals and performances made through theatre history, ancient or
contemporary, from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe are examined. Audio
and video aids are used to illustrate selected materials. Students are required
to attend accessible festival performances, traditional or experimental.
Popular Entertainments H42.2804* McNamara. 4
points.
Traditional popular performance forms such as the circus, fair, carnival,
vaudeville, variety show, and Wild West show; their structure; and the unique
functions of script, performer, and performance space.
Black Atlantic and Contemporary Cultural Criticism
H42.2809 Joseph. 4 points.
This course follows a two-part structure and is an introductory overview to
black cultural criticism in the Atlantic Rim from the 1970s to 1990s, with an
emphasis on the U.S. and Britain. The first quarter of the semester draws on
the tradition of British cultural studies, especially on the work carried on at
the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies, and later, the Open University,
better known in the U.S. through the work of Stuart Hall, Hazel Carby, Paul
Gilroy, John Clarke, Pratibha Parmar, et al. Follows the theoretical and
political debates and positions that were involved in the field of discourse of
black British cultural studies during the 1970s and 1980s. The second part
covers roughly the period of time during which African American studies became
an academic subject in most American universities. Texts read are "post-Civil
Rights"; they draw upon and speak to the challenges and counter-reactions
specific to African American culture and theory in 1993. Emphasis on how black
cultural studies in the U.S. differ from black British cultural and political
investments.
The Performance of History H42.2817 Phelan. 4
points.
This course investigates the relationship between theatre history,
performance scholarship, and the new methods of history writing. Texts
include: Hayden White, Meta History and Interpreting the
Theatrical Past, and others.
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
H42.2814 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. 4 points.
Discussion of key works in the history of Jewish folklore and ethnography
dealing with Christian Hebraists and Jewish ceremonial; Wissenschaft des
Judentums in areas of Statistik, Altertumkunde, Sittengeschichte, and
Volksliteratur; ethnographic expeditions among the Jews of Eastern Europe;
Jewish Volkskunde as a discipline; anthropological studies of Jews from Efron's
work on gesture to recent studies of contemporary Jewish life in the United
States, Europe, and Israel.
Food and Performance
H42.2850 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. 4 points.
Cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approaches to food, its preparation,
presentation, and consumption, viewed as a complex system of performance.
Topics include the physiology of taste and smell and the discourse of
gastronomy; analysis of the design, staging, and choreography of food
preparation, presentation, and consumption; historical and social issues.
Comparative Ethnic Studies H42.2901 Munoz. 4
points
This course surveys the field of critical race theory. African Americans,
U.S. Latinas/os and Asian Americans have called upon critical theory to
make interventions in various spaces. The theory that is produced for
and/or from these communities is studied in great detail. We also
consider the different interventions that these theories attempt to enact.
Recent debates such as those around the role of the public intellectual
are also considered. Readings are taken from cultural studies, film
theory, perfo rmance studies, critical legal theory, literary criticism,
anthropology, history, feminism, and queer theory. Time is spent
considering the "place" of race in these different fields of inquiry.
Finally, the course considers and interrogates the term theory
and consider the ways it has been codified. Inquires into its limitations
and possibilities for expanding notions of what "counts" as the
performance and production of critical theory.
GSAS /
NYU