Course Name: Modern Theatre and Modern Technology
Instructor:
SLN: 13591
Meeting Time: MW, 2:30-4:50pm
Term: Winter 2017
Modern Theatre and Modern Technology
One of the most topical issues in contemporary theatre scholarship is the triangular relationship among theatre, other representational media, and technology. Inspired by media critics such as McLuhan and Baudrillard, the majority of theatre and performance scholars who study this question have placed their discussions in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries, focusing on the emergence of digital media and its effects on live performance. This course, by contrast, attempts to study the topic historically, starting in the early modern period. Our major task will be articulating the (sometimes tacit) theories of representation that emerged as new technologies changed the perceptions and daily practices of people in the west.
Students are requested to read Robert Sokolowski’s Introduction to Phenomenology for the first class session. Inexpensive second-hand copies are available on amazon.com and other online bookstores.
Students also need to buy or borrow the following books:
1. Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (1986)
2. Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer (1992)