Fall 2005

Course Descriptions

THEA 70100 - Theatre Research and Bibliography (Professor Pamela Sheingorn): This introduction to doctoral theatre studies prepares entering students for original research and scholarly writing. We will study general research methodology, approaches to historiography, and ways of reading. . We will work through the stages of the research process, from developing an original idea or question to locating primary materials to setting parameters for the research project. Examples and strategies will be drawn from a broad a range of geographical and historical material. This course also provides an overview of the profession. There will be a particular focus on the preparation and writing of research papers, conference papers, and papers for publication. During the semester I will assign a number of exercises designed to achieve the goals set out above; by the end of the semester each student will have completed a research paper. In addition, there will be a final examination. Texts include Wayne C. Booth et al., The Craft of Research and W. B. Worthen with Peter Holland, eds., Theorizing Practice: Redefining Theatre History. [Course Code = 92328]. Wednesdays, 4:15 pm to 6:15 pm.

THEA 71400 - Aesthetics of Film (Professor David Gerstner): This course introduces the properties of cinematic form by exploring film in relationship to the other arts. Since its beginnings, film was theorized—as art, as political tool, as entertainment—against the backdrop of the aesthetic properties of painting, theatre, literature, and, not surprisingly, magic. By studying the specific properties of cinema, the content it ultimately delivers, and its use of and break from the other arts, we will investigate film aesthetics as a dynamic and modernist negotiation of multi-mediated texts. In this way, this course will engage issues of genre, style, and narrative as they are transformed through the mode of cinematic production and address. Readings include selected works by David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson (Film Art), Robert Allen and Douglas Gomery "Aesthetic Film History"), Lotte Eisner (The Haunted Screen), J. Matthews (Surrealism and Film), Vachel Lindsay (Art of the Motion Picture), Sadakichi Hartmann ("The Esthetic Significance of the Motion Picture"), Michael Fried (Realism, Writing, Disfiguration), and others.Screenings include complete and selected works by F. W. Murnau (Nosferatu), Alfred Hitchcock (Spellbound, Vertigo), Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thief, Shoeshine), Maya Deren (Meshes of the Afternoon), Vincente Minnelli (Yolanda and the Thief), the Wachowski Brothers (Bound), Marlon Riggs (Tongues Untied), Oscar Micheaux (Within Our Gates, Symbol of the Unconquered), Jean Luc Godard (Pierrot Le Fou, Weekend), Shirley Clarke (Portrait of Jason), Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler (Manhatta), Dziga Vertov (Man With a Movie Camera), Sergei Eisenstein (Strike), Walter Ruttman (Berlin: Symphony of a City), Gus Van Sant (Gerry, Elephant), Michael Mann (Collateral), and others. Students will be expected to write short weekly response papers to the readings and screenings, be prepared to discuss the films and readings, and complete a final 12-15 page paper. (NO AUDITORS, PERMITS, NON-MATRICS).  
[Course Code = 92329]. Thursdays, 11:45 am to 3:15 pm.

THEA 80200 - Seminar in a Dramatic Genre: Melodrama (Professor Daniel Gerould): This seminar will explore the genre melodrama, its theoretical foundations, its origins in the ideology of the French Revolution, and the social, cultural, and political contexts of its development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with the democratization of theatre and the rise of new classes of spectators. We shall consider the importance of melodrama as a form of popular entertainment and "low" culture that has only gradually been accepted as a proper subject of scholarly study despite its enormous popularity, and we shall examine its relations to Gothic fiction and cinema. The aesthetics of violence and horror will be investigated in the literature and productions of the Grand Guignol. The seminar will follow the new theatrical techniques introduced by melodrama, the spectacular staging and physical expressivity of its acting, as well as the new subjects and themes it pioneered: urban poverty and crime, labor strife, slavery and racial prejudice, abuse of children, alcoholism, colonial expansion and wars. We shall investigate various "poetics" of melodrama that have been proposed and look at the major theoretical approaches to the genre: popular culture, Marxist, Freudian, Russian formalist, feminist, sociological, postmodern and postcolonial. The seminar will also consider melodrama as a broader dramatic genre which can be found in periods of theatre ranging from ancient Greek to modern, and we shall scrutinize the infiltration of higher artistic forms by a genre traditionally regarded as sub-literary. The seminar will trace the transformations of melodrama in the hands of "highbrow" artists as well as study the process of adaptation from fiction to stage and from stage to screen. Finally we shall consider the legacy of the genre and survey the metamorphoses of the world view and devices of melodrama in contemporary theatre and film, paying special attention to the contributions of the genre to American avant-garde performances. Works and writers to be read include: Pixérécourt’s The Dog of Montargis, The Ruins of Babylon, Christopher Columbus, and Alice, or the Scottish Gravediggers, Boucicault’s  The Poor of New York and The Coleen Bawn, Daly’s Under the Gaslight, Dumas pPre’s Tour de Nesle, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Belasco’s Girl of the Golden West, Euripides’s Iphigenia in Tauris, Seneca’s Thyestes, Shakespeare’s Richard III, Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Shaw’s Captain Brassbound’s Conversion, Shelley and Artaud’s Cenci, plays of the Grand Guignol, Brecht’s The Mother, Tretyakov’s Roar China, Sondheim’s Sweeny Todd, Baraka’s Slave Ship, Shepard’s Melodrama Play, SF Mime Troupe’s False Promises. Theoretical works by a wide range of scholars and practitioners will also be read. One short seminar report and one long research paper required.  
[Course Code = 92330]. Tuesdays, 4:15 pm to 6:15 pm.

THEA 80200 - Seminar T in a Dramatic Genre: Opera and Theatre: Tangled Relations (Professor Judith Milhous): Opera can do almost anything theatre can do, and on a good night (which doesn't happen as often as some of us would like), can do it better. This course will be more concerned with opera as a part of theatre than with opera qua opera. It is designed to help students study for the First Exam, so it will emphasize the kinds of connections that exam looks for. Examples will be chosen to cover as broad a range of theatrical history as possible, though not in chronological order. No knowledge of music or previous acquaintance with opera is necessary: I assume that many, even most, members of the class will have neither. We will therefore consider elementary topics such as the place of a given opera in its composer's career (early/late, formula/experiment, success/failure) and its immediate theatrical context (sources; production information of all kinds; stylistic imperatives or departures therefrom). More importantly, each opera will be paired with at least one or more plays that represent the larger theatrical context, and with a relevant theoretical or critical essay. For example, Handel's Xerxes (with excerpts from recordings of modern productions) might be read with Lee's The Rival Queens and Racine's Bajazet, and with selections from Said on Orientalism. These companion pieces will allow us to consider what was going on in theatre when the opera was first produced and/or what led to its story. When and why the opera has been revived will also get attention. Ballet, which for much of its life was closely associated with opera, will get a nod from time to time. The core of the class is to explore how each form has influenced the other, from the beginnings of opera in Renaissance Italy to the present. Some of the titles I am considering are: Wagner, The Ring; Rimsky-Korsakov, The Snow Maiden; Dukas, Ariane et Barbe-bleu; Rameau, Les Indes Galantes; Cilea, Adrianna Lecouvreur; Britten, Peter Grimes; Gluck, Iphigenie in Aulide; Berg, Lulu; Adams, Nixon in China; and Sheng, Madam Mao. (Suggestions would be welcome. To be honest, I accepted some last time, but rejected others.) Requirements include an oral report on one of the operas on the syllabus, a short written report on an opera performance of your choice, and a term paper, either on a subject related to this course or as part of an on-going project.  
[Course Code = 92331].  Thursdays,2:00 pm to 4:00 pm.

THEA 80200 - Seminar in a Dramatic Genre: Critical Perspectives on the American Musical Theatre (Professor David Savran): This course provides an overview of the history of the most seductive of theatrical genres, the American musical, from Showboat (1927) to the works of Stephen Sondheim, with critical analyses of text, music, and mise en scPne. New scholarship—on taste, the sociology of culture, orientalism, critical race theory, gender roles, and queer spectatorship—will be emphasized. The class will focus both on the development of the genre (especially between 1927 and 1959) and on individual musicals that have provided the subject matter for a growing body of provocative, critical analyses. These musicals include Showboat, Strike Up the Band, Babes in Arms, Pal Joey, Lady in the Dark, Oklahoma!, South Pacific, West Side Story, Gypsy, Follies, and Sunday in the Park with George. Scholarship on musical theatre has long been anecdotal and woefully superficial. Even some of the most prominent writers on the subject are guilty of recycling sweeping and misleading clichés. But a new generation of scholars is emerging that is questioning the clichés and transforming the field, including D.A. Miller, Andrea Most, Stacy Wolf, Gerald Mast, Lauren Berlant, Jeffrey Melnick, and Stephen Banfield. We will frame our examination of this criticism with the work of theorists who have analyzed the history and sociology of popular and/or mass-cultural forms, including Theodor Adorno, Lawrence Levine, and Paul DiMaggio. We will pay special attention to the musical’s relationship to other genres and media (including so-called straight theatre, opera, minstrelsy, vaudeville, jazz, musical modernism, and cinema), its role in consolidating American identities, its seemingly magical power to thrill and enrapture, and its status as a lightening rod for fears and anxieties swirling around cultural legitimation in the U.S.  
[Course Code = 92684]. Mondays, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm.

THEA 80300 - Seminar in Theatre Theory & Criticism: English & American Theatre Criticism from William Hazlitt to Frank Rich (Professor Charles McNulty): This course will provide an in-depth exploration of the major British and American theater critics from William Hazlitt to Frank Rich. The course will also explore their writings within thematic frameworks that attempt to relate an individual critic’s work to developing trends in British and American theatrical and critical traditions. Our approach will closely track the relationship between critical style and theatrical subject, paying close attention rhetorical strategy, while situating the criticism within its theatrical moment. We will also explore the changing nature of journalistic outlet for criticism, and the effect of this on critical values. Requirements: term paper and oral report.
[Course Code = 92332]. Tuesdays, 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm.

THEA 81500 - Seminar in Film Studies: Holocaust Memories: Films, Monuments, Museums (Professor Stuart Liebman): This course will focus on cinematic treatments of the Holocaust as well as on the complex issues surrounding the representation of this unprecedented historical event. Readings will include poems, memoirs, theoretical texts, and novels as well as historiographic and philosophical reflections about the Holocaust. We will also devote time to reflections about Holocaust memorial monuments and museums, as well as about the way Holocaust memories are conveyed in other visual art forms (Christian Boltanski, among others). Questions to be addressed include: What roles have films and other works of visual art played in shaping public awareness of the Holocaust? How have films, monuments and museums about the Holocaust and their public reception changed over time in different countries, especially in Germany and Eastern Europe where most of the slaughter actually took place, and where the vicissitudes of the Cold War and its aftermath have dramatically impacted the political, social and moral meanings of World War II? To what extent has cinematic "kitsch" and the voyeurism of uninformed audiences around the world adulterated public memory of the Holocaust? BOOKS TO BE READ: Lucy Dawidowicz. The War Against the Jews (Bantam);Primo Levi. The Drowned and the Saved (Summit Books); Primo Levi. Survival in Auschwitz (HarperCollins); Cynthia Ozick. The Shawl (Vintage); Elie Wiesel. Night (Bantam). Syllabus available in Certificate Programs Office (Room 5109). [Course Code = 92685]. Mondays, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm.

THEA 81500 - Seminar in Film Studies: The Horror Film (Professor Heather Hendershot): This course surveys the history of the horror film, from its roots in the gothic novel to its more recent manifestations in the slasher film and the new Japanese ghost films. To initiate our discussion of the horror film’s conception of monstrous subjectivity, the first reading will be Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We will consider issues of gender and spectatorship by drawing on Carol Clover’s Men, Women and Chainsaws and Barry Keith Grant’s The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film; the horror film’s critique of the ideology of the family will be discussed via Robin Wood’s writings. The class will also examine industrial and economic forces which have shaped the horror film such as the fall of the studio system and the rise of gimmicks such as 3D; to this end students will read Kevin Heffernan’s Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold: Horror films and the American Movie Business 1953-1968. Finally, a key goal of the class will be to examine the issue of taste and the horror film’s simultaneous status as "trash" and "art," the relationship between cult and camp, and the high/low aesthetic of Italian giallo films. For this part of the class we will read Joan Hawkins’ Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde as well as: Jeff Sconce’s "‘Trashing’ the Academy: Taste, Excess and an Emerging Politics of Cinematic Style"; Susan Sontag’s "Notes on Camp"; and Mark Jancovich’s "Cult Fictions: Cult Movies, Subcultural Capital and the Production of Cultural Distinctions." One film will be screened in class each week, and students will also be given a weekly list of optional recommended films. For most classes we will discuss two films, and students will be assigned one of the films to view before class. (The list of films is available in the Certificate Programs Office, Room 5109). Students will complete one major assignment for the class, a 25-30 page research paper on a topic chosen in consultation with the instructor. Each student will meet individually with me one month before the end of the semester to discuss his/her final project, and proposals for the final papers will be due two weeks before the end of the semester. Papers should involve substantial original research and should display both mastery of issues covered in the class and the ability to apply course concepts to the paper topic.  [Course Code = 92333]. Tuesdays, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm.

THEA 81500 - Seminar in Film Studies: Film & American Culture in the 1950s: Genre and Politics (Professor Morris Dickstein): In recent years the 1950s has emerged as one of the most fascinating decades in the history of the twentieth century and in film history. Once stereotyped either as golden age of home and family or a swamp of conformism, repression, and anti-Communist hysteria, the period is now seen as a much more complex and transitional era. This course will examine the cross-currents of politics and culture in the 1950s by focusing on key American films and film genres, including musicals, westerns, films noirs, sci-fi, horror, women’s films, thrillers, and socially conscious dramas about race, troubled youth, the cold war, and other issues. With the help of some key books of the period, such as The Catcher in the Rye and The Organization Man, as well as some sidelong glances at key television programs, the course will explore the social and aesthetic context of these films. Topics of discussion will include the cold war, the debate over McCarthyism and conformity, the changes in Hollywood (including the blacklist), the decay of cities, concerns about organized crime and juvenile delinquency, the effects of affluence and suburbanization, the conflicts over race, the rise of consumer culture and of new forms of mass communication, the generation gap, and the changes in American values that led to the 1960s, including the beginnings of the counterculture. The course will try to define the moral and intellectual climate of the postwar era as seen through its films. The films screened will include such works as Sunset Boulevard, Singin’ in the Rain, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Rebel Without a Cause, The Thing, The Searchers, Bend of the River, Pickup on South Street, Forbidden Planet, The Defiant Ones, The Big Heat, Written on the Wind, and The Sweet Smell of Success. The structure of the course will be comparative and cumulative. Each film will be linked with another film or book on a similar theme, to be seen or read in preparation for the class. Each student will be expected to deliver one oral report and to write a research paper. Secondary works will include books like Peter Biskind’s Seeing Is Believing and Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era.  
[Course Code = 92334]. Wednesdays, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm.

THEA 81500 - Seminar in Film Studies: Spectacular Realities: Immersion and Interactivity in Film & Related Arts (Professor Alison Griffiths): This course offers an interdisciplinary investigation of diverse forms of spectacular image-making, from Medieval cathedrals to contemporary Imax films. A fundamental premise of the course is that a fascination with hyper-illusionist and immersive ways of seeing the world have long pre-dated their contemporary incarnations in digital and electronic media. There has been a persistent fascination with large-scale representations that present the possibility of immersion, interactivity, and in some instances, three-dimensional encounters with the world (including the eighteenth-century circular panorama and its various spin-offs), and audiences have long enjoyed the perceptual play between real and unreal endemic to these spectacular representations. This course offers a genealogical study of these spectacular realities, drawing upon theories of visuality and cultural history to enable students to make intellectual connections between old and new media. For example, a unit on Medieval cathedrals and tapestries will explore the theoretical ramifications of the "revered gaze"; we will consider the spectatorial and iconographical correspondences across representations of Christ’s Passion from the Middle Ages, late nineteenth century panoramas, and contemporary Hollywood cinema. In addition, by identifying some of the enduring features of panoramas, Imax films and 360 degree Internet technologies, students will gain a more sophisticated understanding of how these phenomena have been promoted for their respective audiences, including the strikingly similar rhetorical claims made about each form. Working from the premise that there may be little essentially "new" about "new media," especially with regards to the discursive construction of the experience on offer, students will be encouraged to explore associations across historical periods and disciplinary boundaries, to think creatively about ways in which new media reinvent old phenomena and phantasmatic desires. Students will explore a rich range of visual and reading materials, of special interest to students interested in film and new media, pre-cinema, Art History, Theatre, and English. Organized both conceptually and chronologically, the course begins with a theoretical overview of critical approaches to theories of spectacle, visuality, and immersion, considering the works of Walter Benjamin, Rudolf Arnheim, Guy Debord, David Freedberg, Oliver Grau, Barbara Maria Stafford, Hal Foster, Chris Jenks, Lisa Cartwright, Tom Gunning, Anne Freedberg, Vanessa Schwartz, and Paul Virilio. The course will involve in a process of accretion, first examining pre-twentieth century spectacle-making, including gothic cathedrals, medieval tapestries, frescoes, dioramas, panoramas (both circular and moving), waxworks, planetariums, and natural history dioramas, before looking more closely at the relationship between moving images and exhibition contexts, such as the world’s fair, museum of natural history, amusement park, and the Internet. In addition to slides, screenings include Film Before Film, a selection of early cinema (pre-1907) nonfiction subjects from the Library of Congress Paper Print Collection, in particular reenactments and panoramas, The World on Display (on the 1904 St Louis exposition) and The World of Tomorrow (on the 1939 New York World’s Fair), To Fly, Across the Sea of Time, Everest, The Matrix, Minority Report, and The Reality Trip. Students will also undertake several fieldtrips: to the American Museum of Natural History’s planetarium show Passport to the Universe, Sonic Vision, a digitally animated alternative music show, and the newly refurbished hi-tech Hall of Ocean Life; to the Sony Imax Theater; and to a retail/commercial environment of their choice where moving images, interactive exhibits, and immersive sound-scapes define the experience. Students will write two short critical response papers to assigned readings, a mid-term assignment organized around one of the field-trips, and a fifteen page research paper devised in close consultation with the professor.  
[Course Code = 92335]. Thursdays, 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm.

THEA 85200 - Seminar in Theatre History and Production: History of Stage Design (Professor Marvin Carlson): This course will cover the major trends and leading theorists and practitioners of theatrical stage design in the West from the Renaissance to the present. A wide selection of visual material from the program slide collection will be shown in the class, which will take place in a computer classroom. Blocks of related visual material will also be made accessible through each student’s graduate center computer account. No specific texts are required, but before each class each student will need to download onto a personal CD the images for that class and bring this to class to add notes. There will be approximately 3 classes devoted to Renaissance and 17th century design, 1 on the 18th century, 3 on the 19th and 6 on the 20th century. During the term each student will prepare biographical studies of two designers, one twentieth century and one non-twentieth century. There will be a final examination based on identification of selected images.
[Course Code = 92337]. Mondays, 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm.

THEA 85200 - Seminar in Theatre History and Production: Translantic Theatre: Golden Age Spain and New Spain (Professor Jean Graham-Jones): This course will focus on theatre and performance produced in Spain and Latin America during the 16th and 17th centuries. Rather than treating Latin America as a colonial extension of the Spanish-speaking metropolis, we will take a transcultural approach to the two regions and read them through their constant (albeit often conflicted) dialogue with each other. To do this we will discuss, apply, and critique the social, cultural, and literary theories of such scholars as Angel Rama, Néstor García Canclini, Walter Mignolo, and José Antonio Maravall. The course will first look at theatre / performance practices in place in both regions before the arrival of the Spanish to the Americas and then proceed to an examination of Spain’s "Golden Age" of theatre as well as colonial theatre and performance in Latin America. We will read autos sacramentales in addition to comedias and entremeses from both sides of the Atlantic; study accounts of Corpus Christi processions in Madrid and Cuzco in addition to reconstructions of pre-Hispanic performance-scripts; and seek out specific examples of transcultural encounter, such as those resulting from the translation of a Spanish play into Nahuatl or a colonial loa intended for a madrileZo audience. Among the authors whose plays we will read are Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca, Valdivieso, Cervantes, Ruiz de Alarcón, and sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.There will be six short response papers, in-class presentations, and a final research project.
[Course Code = 92336]. Thursdays, 4:15 pm to 6:15 pm.