Introduction to Performance Studies
(PERF-GT 1000, 4 points)
To be taken in the student's first semester in the M.A. program. This course is designed to introduce students to the field of performance studies via examination of some of the foundational texts, tracing various genealogies of the field and considering its links to various disciplines/modes of inquiry (anthropology, theater studies, dance studies, gender studies, critical race theory, psychoanalysis, etc.). What makes performance studies performance studies, and why do it? In considering this question we will consider the specificity of performance as an object of study, a mode of inquiry, a practice of self-hood and sociality, and aesthetic practice; we will also focus on the specific challenges and potentialities in writing about/as performance.