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Seminar: Problems in Performance Studies (515-0-21)

Topic

Performance, Race and Media

Instructors

Miriam Joanna Petty

Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson

Meeting Info

University Library 3670: Wed 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

Frantz Fanon once wrote of the experience of racialization's revelation as occurring in a circuit of performance, film, and spectatorship. Recognizing that media and performance—medium and the body—play related but divergent roles in the making and unmaking of race, this advanced doctoral seminar draws two distinct disciplinary formations (media studies and performance studies) into conversation to engage and explore emergent and enduring texts relevant to issues of race, performance, and media in the US and beyond, from a variety of disciplines, eras, approaches, and schools of thought. We engage with film, performance art, television, popular musical performance and the music video, as well as criticism and theory from Black studies, Asian American studies, Indigenous Studies, and Latinx studies, with particular emphasis on Black feminisms and queer of color critique. Interested students should apply to instructors with 200-word (max) rationale explaining interest and relevant previous coursework and research experience: jchambers@northwestern.edu and m-petty@northwestern.edu.