THEA 298 - Special Topics in Performance Studies

Performance Studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines performance in its broadest sense-as artistic practice, social ritual, cultural expression, and political intervention. Drawing from theatre, dance, anthropology, cultural studies, and critical theory, Performance Studies explores how performance shapes and reflects identity, power, and meaning in everyday life. This course offers an in-depth exploration of specialized topics within Performance Studies, with themes that may include intercultural performance, gender and performance, race and performance, disability performance, performance and technology, and/or performance and politics. Each iteration of the course will focus on a specific area of study, engaging with performance theory texts, live and mediated performances, and creative research methods. Students will analyze performances as sites of cultural negotiation, resistance, and innovation while also considering their own roles as performers, spectators, and makers of meaning. Through critical discussions, written analysis, and creative projects, students will gain a deeper understanding of how performance functions both on and off the stage, shaping our world and our ways of being in it.

Bodies in Performance: Critical Casting Practices
This course examines the central role of casting in making meaning in performance. Drawing on theories of “non-traditional” casting, the course explores how bodies are coded and read by audiences, how artists can mobilize or resist these associations, and the larger cultural and political implications of embodied representation. Students consider how casting negotiates identity markers such as race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and disability through global case studies that include reimaginations of the Western canon, intercultural adaptations and exchange, instances of national “branding,” and high-profile casting controversies around fictional (and in some cases, fantastical) characters.

Experiments in Performance
This course explores processes of performance-making by combining critical analysis and theoretical frameworks with studio practice. The course surveys diverse approaches to crafting performance: from gallery-based performance art to public street performance to political protest. Through readings, viewings, performance attendance, and class discussions, students develop a critical vocabulary of key performance elements such as duration, chance, repetition, scale, and the role of space and place. they then experiment with these elements through practical exercises in a creative laboratory format, investigating the relationship between theory and practice. The course culminates in the creation of original performance pieces guided by students’ individual or shared intellectual and artistic interests.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Repeatable for Credit: May be taken 5 times for credit
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).