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UW Center for Performance Studies

Category: Archive courses

Archived Courses for the Full List

DRAMA 494: Black Theatre to 1965

Catalog Description: 

Topics in drama, history, and criticism. See Time Schedule for specific topic.

GE Requirements: 

Visual, Literary, and Performing Arts (VLPA)

DRAMA 571: Religion, Performance and Antitheatricality

Using as a discursive center the supposed “rebirth” of drama in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic church in the tenth century after theatricality had been banned by that very institution hundreds of years earlier, this course looks at the push and pull relationship between performance and Christian doctrine and public practice. From the condemnations of spectacle by Tertullian and Augustine to the antitheatrical pamphlets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we engage transhistorically with how the church has felt about theatre and, for instance, who stands to gain each time it’s banned. 

CLAS 430 / C LIT 496 A

Catalog Description: Principal myths found in classical and later literature. 

GE Requirements: Visual, Literary, and Performing Arts (VLPA)

ENGL 555 A: Feminist Theories

Syllabus Description:

This course surveys contemporary public-facing, humanistic work in feminist studies, highlighting communication in multiple forms and modes including blogs, websites, podcasts, op-eds, monographs, and video. We attend especially to scholarship in the field that is explicitly interested in engaging beyond the academy walls, both in bringing scholarly work to non-academic publics and also in joining and building communities of thinkers that are not based in the academy. We look at public-facing platforms and public-facing initiatives such as the Op-Ed project, The Conversation, Signs’ “Ask a Feminist” series, Wikipedia Edit-a-Thons, Public Books, and NYU Press’s Avidly Reads series. The course has students practice public-facing communication: we write brief essays that we send out for publication. We have the opportunity to create videos and/or podcasts. Overall, our goal is not only to write about feminism but to produce feminist work.

Three central learning objectives frame the course: (1) to have students understand and practice a range of public-facing academic communication, experimenting with different voices; (2) to have students become familiar with central platforms and initiatives that support this work and to be able to think critically about these; (3) to have students consider how literary and cultural criticism can be and has been practiced in community.

ASIAN 498 C: Special Topics

JAPANESE THROUGH SONGS

Add Code required
JAPANESE THROUGH SONGS
FOR STUDENTS IN 200-LEVEL JAPANESE
OR STUDENTS WHO COMPLETED JAPAN 203
BUT DID NOT TAKE 3RD YEAR JAPANESE.
(STUDENTS WHO HAVE TAKEN 300-LEVEL
JAPANESE MAY ENROLL IF THERE IS
SPACE). TO GET AN ADD CODE, EMAIL:
AOHTA@UW.EDU

The New Avant-Gardes: US Avant-Garde Performance after World-War II

Description

Since the 1960s, when the so-called historical avant-garde began to be seriously examined, scholars have proclaimed the avant-garde dead on many occasions. Equally frequently, other scholars have countered that the death of the avant-garde has been announced prematurely. This course examines the conditions under which avant-garde aesthetic has emerged in the US and elsewhere since WWII. Key moments include the Paris student riots of 1968, which many critics have endowed with the status of the first neo-avant-garde performance, and 9/11, which others view as the beginning of a conservative avant-garde. This course is particularly interested in the intersections among avant-garde art and performances of gender, race, and religion.

Catalog Description: Analytic approaches to dramatic materials, concentrating on semiotics, Marxism, feminism, or a related critical theory.

Acting Up: Teaching Theater for Change

DRAMA 490F/599C

In this multidisciplinary course, students practice using the language and methods of
theater to challenge institutional oppression and advance community dialogue about power
and privilege. This practice generates opportunities for collective problem-solving. The
course culminates in a student-generated interactive theater performance and dialogue.

How do you make positive change in classroom and institutional
climates so that all of our students thrive?

That’s an increasingly urgent question in higher education and beyond. One evidencebased
answer: by building practical skills in Theatre of the Oppressed, social change theater,
and other arts-based pedagogies. These skills promote inclusive educational environments,
whether in a classroom, online, or in community contexts.

DRAMA 373 A: Theatre History III

Focuses on the explosion of new theatre and performance forms across the globe from the from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Explores modern and contemporary theatre and performance from the rise of realism and the early avant garde through the innovations of the twentieth century to political performance and theatre for social change. Builds critical, historical, and cultural understanding through student research and writing. Prerequisite: DRAMA 201.