Episodes in Literary Cultures

In this course we explore theories and practices of gender and race through physical performances in interdisciplinary art works, which include theatre, dance, performance art, film, animation, and music in live and mediated forms. We will focus on how race and gender stereotypes shift, resist, and radicalize in art works, which travel outside national borders and encounter “other” bodies. Whose body is this in these aesthetic and popular representations? Who is making up the rules for our bodies? Whose body dares disrupt an authoritarian national image? Whose body plays by the rules and subverts the regime of censored gender and racial performance acts? The course will include critical analysis of performance and media, participation in performance/media experiments, and attendance at several performance/media events.