Fall 2010

THEATER AND ANTHROPOLOGY:  READINGS IN PERFORMANCE STUDIES

Listed in: English, as ENGL-95

Faculty

Jennifer A. Cayer (Section 02)

Description

Theater and anthropology have been linked, from debates on the ritual origins of theater to those accounts of the performative dimensions of rendering the fieldwork experience in writing.  “Performance” is a key term for both disciplines.  We will begin with the links forged between theater and anthropology, and the debates and discussions that contributed to the development of performance studies as a discipline.  We will then look closely at the relationship between performance art practices and the enterprise of fieldwork-based ethnography.  What does it mean to stage theatrically an “other” or the idea of otherness?  How have artists used the body in performance to imagine and enact culture, nation, otherness, selfhood, and the complex relations among them?  Our comparison of artistic and social practices will be grounded in the following topics:  ritual, play, gender, documentation, primitivism, exoticism, the participant-observer process as it relates to self-other dynamics, and practices of spectatorship and the gaze.

Limited to 15 students.  Fall semester.  Visiting Professor Cayer.

ENGL 95 - L/D

Section 02
Tu 11:30 AM - 12:50 PM JOCH 21
Th 11:30 AM - 12:50 PM JOCH 21

Offerings

2024-25: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Spring 20112024-25: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 20112024-25: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2007, Spring 2009, Spring 2011, Fall 2013, Fall 20162024-25: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 20112024-25: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 20102024-25: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Fall 20102024-25: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Spring 2011, Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 20222024-25: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 20112024-25: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2010, Fall 20162024-25: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2008, Fall 2009, Fall 20102024-25: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2010, Fall 2011, Spring 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2018