The field of Performance Studies looks carefully at the production and transmission of knowledge from a range of vantage points. This includes the written word, but it also pays special attention to embodied practice, to the built environment, and to digital spaces. In this course we will focus on performance as a form of cultural expression and as a site of cultural exchange across a variety of contexts-from staged productions to acts of everyday life. We will use performance theory to analyze sports events as ritual performances and as platforms for social change. We will think about how monuments perform, how they not only construct often contentious stories about the past but also create opportunities for dialogue. We will privilege the body as a site and method of performance to think in intersectional ways about race, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and religion. As an interdisciplinary and practice-oriented course, we will reflect critically and imaginatively on the work of anthropologists, scholars of race and ethnicity, visual artists, and performance theorists.
Course Attributes: AS HUM; EN H
