Skip to main content

Integrating Project Seminar (395-0-20)

Topic

Performance Theory: Race & Gender in Global Contex

Instructors

Steven Keary Watts

Meeting Info

Annenberg Hall G28: Tues, Thurs 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

Course title: Performance and Power: Gender, Race, and Sexuality

This course explores how categories and expressions of gender, race, and sexuality are created, circulated, and contested through performance. Rather than disentangle experiences and representations of gender, race, and sexuality to focus on one category over the others, our analysis will bring these categories to bear on one another as we work to theorize how bodies accrue social meaning that objectifies, stereotypes, appropriates, and maybe even empowers or liberates human subjects to challenge sexism, transphobia, racism, and homophobia. Performance studies is an interdisciplinary field animated by the insights and methods of many disciplines such as theatre studies, anthropology, literary studies, sociology, political science, philosophy, and several others. As a result, it will likely resonate with students in any academic discipline, and no experience with performance is necessary. The course is primarily a seminar-style discussion. By the end of the term, students will have produced an original research project that analyzes some aspect of performance alongside topics of gender, race, and/or sexuality that have a global significance.