Fall 2023 Honors Seminar ~ Histories/Topics
LOVE AND CAPITALISM
Professor Alisa Zhulina
oiz203@nyu.edu
THEA_UT 801.001 ~ 4 credits
Thursdays 11:00 a.m. - 1:45 p.m.
In this course, we will explore the dramatic representations and performances of love and intimacy in the age of capital. The rise of capitalism engendered many new ideas about romantic love: from the bourgeois custom of marrying for love to the bohemian experiment of free love. Theatre was at the center of these debates and transformations. Beginning with modern drama and continuing onto contemporary performance, we will look at how artists imagine, encourage, and challenge their audiences’ attitudes toward love in the context of shifting socio-economic factors. The coeval development of neoclassical economics and sexology in the late nineteenth century made explicit that economic questions are intertwined with erotic desires. This entanglement persists to this day. Primary texts include Hedda Gabler, Miss Julie, Three Sisters, Spring Awakening, An Ideal Husband, Yerma, Pride and Prejudice, The Awful Truth, Fool for Love, Hadestown, The Tinder Swindler, and Bridgerton. We will also read critical texts by Adorno, Cavell, Freud, Engels, Luhmann, Marx, Simmel, and many others.