Fall 2006
Course Descriptions
Theatre
Research and Bibliography (Professor
Judith Milhous): This course is designed to
acquaint students with methods of research in theatre history,
criticism, and theory as they are currently practiced. 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. Along the way we
will become acquainted with the important periodicals in the
field. We will gain familiarity with the forms in which research
ideas and projects are formulated, such as the abstract and the
dissertation proposal, as well as the forms in which completed
research is presented, such as the seminar paper, the scholarly
article, the conference paper, and the monographic study. During
the semester I will assign a number of exercises designed to
achieve the goals set out above. In addition, there will be a
final examination. Texts include Wayne C. Booth et al., The Craft of Research and Thomas
Mann, Library Research Models.
Thursdays, 2:00 pm to 4:00pm.
Development of Dramatic Structure (Professor
David Willinger): As the change in
title suggests, this course will still be concerned with texts
drawn from world drama throughout recorded history, but in
addition to placing emphasis upon structural analysis, the
course will also look at the social and cultural background of
the texts and at how they relate to other texts thematically or
structurally. Each class will address approximately three plays
(lengths vary), plus ancillary material, with substantial
representation of both the generally accepted canon and of
non-canonical works, and including both pre- and post-1900
drama. Paper requirement: one short paper (7-8 pages) at
mid-term; one longer paper (10-15 pages) at the end of the term.
Further specifics when class meets. Tuesdays, 4:15pm
to 6:15pm.
Aesthetics of Film (Professor
Stuart Liebman): This
course introduces students to graduate-level film analysis by
acquainting them with basic film techniques, strategies, and
styles. Central topics to be studied include narrative and
nonnarrative forms, mise-en-scPne,
composition, camera movement, editing, sound and music, genre,
and spectatorship. In addition, students will become familiar
with a variety of critical perspectives on film as well as the
essential bibliographical sources and fundamentals of research
in the field. The major course texts are: David Bordwell/Kristin
Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 7th ed. (McGraw
Hill, 2003) and Kristin Thompson, Breaking the Glass Armor (Princeton U.P., 1988) Some key historical and theoretical
primary texts, as well as others focusing on contextualizing
single films, will also be assigned. Whenever possible, books
and articles will be placed on reserve. Course requirements: One
long critical research paper about a film to be chosen by the
student in consultation with the instructor. Depending on class
size, there may also be short presentations by students.
Attendance, keeping up with the readings, and contributing to
ongoing discussion is crucial. (Enrollment limited. No permits,
non-matrics, auditors). Thursdays,
2:00pm to 5:00pm.
Seminar
in Dramatic Genre: Historical & Documentary Drama (Professor Daniel Gerould):
The seminar takes as its subject the relations between drama and
history and explores how, at different times and in different
places, the theatre, drawing upon changing conceptions of
history and its uses, has gone about retrieving and dramatizing
the past. Over the past five hundred years the history play has
evolved as a dramatic genre, based on recorded documents and
concerned with public issues, whose action takes place in the
past, remote or recent. By means of an artful selection and
arrangement of source materials, the playwright reconstructs the
historical past (sometimes in conjunction with myth or legend)
and dramatizes what could actually have happened, might have
happened, or should have happened. In the belief that history is
a major determinant of human destiny, the historical dramatist
reanimates the past in order to understand the present, study
the historical process and its laws, and foresee the future.
Philosophical, didactic, and political in nature, the history
play offers contemporary audiences lessons drawn from the past.
A modern genre not recognized in classical theory, the history
play developed rapidly in Elizabethan England in the 1580s
inspired by the Tudor Chronicles, Renaissance theories of
historiography, and a new sense of national identity. Although
Marlowe and others essayed the genre once or twice, the English
history play was largely the creation of Shakespeare, whose ten
histories constitute almost one third of his dramatic output and
are by far the largest number of such works by any single
Elizabethan playwright. Shakespeare’s example caused the history
play to spread throughout Europe during the Romantic era, when
the genre played an important social and political role in
countries engaged in struggles for national liberation. Ibsen
began his career as a historical dramatist, Schiller wrote the
major portion of his work in the genre, and Strindberg wrote a
long cycle of history plays on Scandinavian history. Since the
decline of tragedy in the nineteenth century, the history play
has become the most important form of communal, ceremonial drama
popular with a broad public. Twentieth-century history plays
reflect changing theories of historiography and contemporary
perceptions of the past and our ability to recover it. In the
1920s century Erwin Piscator and others developed documentary
drama and the theatre of fact, and in the 1970s Peter Cheeseman,
using oral history, delved into the historical dimensions of
private life. The documentary, quasi-documentary, and
faux-documentary have gained in popularity in recent years
because of the possibilities they offer for ideological argument
and theatrical experimentation. Emphasis in the seminar will be
placed on the theoretical issues raised by historical and
documentary drama. Special attention will be given to female
playwrights, who excel in the genre. Among the major works to be
read are Shakespeare’s King John and Henry V, Marlowe’s Edward
II, Ford’s Perkin Warbeck, Cervantes’s Siege of Numantia,
Racine’s Britannicus, Schiller’s Mary Stuart, Buchner’s Danton’s
Death, Strindberg’s Master Olaf, Amelia Hertz’s The Destruction
of Tyre, Shaw’s Saint Joan, Przybyszewska’s The Danton Case,
Anouilh’s The Lark, Brecht’s Days of the Commune, Hochhuth’s The
Deputy, Weiss’s The Investigation, Arden’s Left-handed Liberty,
Bolt’s Vivat! Vivat Regina!, Churchill’s Light Shining in
Buckinghamshire, Emily Mann’s Execution of Justice, and Ray
Aranha’s Remington. Wednesdays,4:15am to
6:15pm.
Seminar
in Theatre Theory & Criticism: Theorizing "Post" (Professor Jean Graham-Jones): In
this course we will study theories typically categorized as
postmodern, poststructuralist, and especially postcolonial by
looking at some of the key concepts informing these theories:
agency and subjectivity; race and ethnicity; gender; class;
decolonization; the local and the global; cultural hybridity;
and cosmopolitanism. We will read texts by Foucault, Derrida,
Althusser, White, Jenkins, Agamben, Lyotard, Frow, Lehmann,
During, Richard, Eagleton, Fanon, Bhaba, Fusco, Said, Spivak,
Dyer, Young, Garcia Canclini, de la Campa, Appadurai, and Appiah.
The class will function as both a seminar and a
workshop: We will begin the study of each conceptual module by
reading and discussing theoretical texts as well as critical
essays that methodologically employ these theories; then, as a
class, we will create our own theoretically inflected, critical
readings--first, in group analyses of selected theatrical and
performance texts, and later through individual analyses of
texts chosen by the students. A final paper will be required,
and the paper should benefit from and grow out of the group and
individual in-class analyses. Students will also be expected to
participate actively in the class's ongoing blackboard
discussions. Plays and productions currently under consideration
include Pavlovsky's Potestad (1980s-90s multiple
productions), Césaire's A Tempest (Serreau's original and McCauley's New York
productions), Padmanabhan's Harvest (mid-1990s premiere
and two recent productions), Jones's Stones in His Pockets,
and De la Guarda's Villa villa. However, every effort will
be made to tailor the selection of theatrical and performance
texts to the interests of the students participating in the
course. Thursdays, 4:15pm to 6:15pm.
Seminar
in Film Studies: Studies in Film Authorship Professor
David Gertsne) This course investigates the concept of
‘film authorship’ as it developed in the cinema studies
discipline. Through readings and screenings (focused on one
filmmaker, Gus Van Sant) the seminar interrogates the multiple
ways and reasons that film authorship persists in the field. The
course takes as its start point my recent work in the Routledge/AFI
anthology, Authorship and Film, to trace and understand
how the concept of ‘film authorship’ came to be produced and why
it has maintained its significance and appeal.‘Studies in Film
Authorship’ is designed as a seminar. The emphasis on a single
filmmaker will focus our discussions on the authorial concept
particularly since a figure such as Van Sant raises not only
thematic issues (mise-en-scPne,
genre, style), his work provocatively renders ideological
concerns associated with cultural production (gender, sexuality,
class, nationalism, Hollywood vs. independent production, and
authorial presence-identity). In this way, the seminar takes up
traditional studies of the auteur while simultaneously engaging
contemporary issues in queer theory, race studies, and feminism.
Some key questions thus posed in the class: Why is it relevant
to study the film author? What is its historical significance in
film studies and the arts in general? What broader concepts are
at stake (ideologically, creatively, politically)? Is it
possible to develop a methodology that studies film authorship
not only as an examination of the text as such but also one that
draws upon historical evidences, ideological concerns, and
philosophical inquiry? Additionally, though the class is
anchored in film studies, many of the writers (as well as the
filmmaker under discussion) brought to the seminar table draw
upon a wide range of art and media to query the
"author-function" (to borrow Foucault’s terms). From Walter
Benjamin’s theatrically-rooted "Author as Producer" to Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelaisian "author-creator" to Peter Wollen’s
symphonic metaphor in his work on the auteur, the author-concept
in cinema studies evolves from ideas generated in other
disciplines such as painting, music, performance, and
literature. Hence, students will consider both the film-specific
model of film authorship and film’s strong interdisciplinary
relationship to the other arts. Readings for the semester
include the works of François
Truffaut, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, Oscar Wilde, Roland
Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Michael Baxandall,
Walter Benjamin, Mikhail Bakhtin, Peter Wollen, Jane Gaines,
Janet Staiger, David Gerstner, Pam Cook, Claire Johnston, Judith
Mayne, Judith Butler, Marlon Riggs, Sarah Projansky, and Kent A.
Ono. Students will be required to complete readings, attend
screenings, write one-page weekly papers to be included as part
of weekly discussion, and submit a 15-page final paper. The
course will be presented as both lecture and seminar discussion.
Wednesdays, 2:00pm to 5:30pm.
Seminar
in Film Studies: Cultural Theory & The Documentary Film (Professor
Alison Griffiths): Cultural Theory and the
Documentary is a lecture/seminar course examining documentary
cinema through the lens of cultural theory. Methodologically,
the course aims to expose students to cultural theorists who can
help shed new light on both canonical and obscure documentary
texts. The course is organized around three key topics: the
documentary archive and the ethnographic gaze; national identity
and documentary aesthetics; and experimental and postcolonial
documentary practice. Cultural Theory and the Documentary offers
students a broad introduction to cultural theory, drawing upon
such theoretical frameworks as historiography, race, gender,
class, nation, ethnography, and postmodernism. Films screened in
class will encompass the following genres: silent ethnographic
film, Griersonian documentary, feminist documentary, direct
cinema, postcolonial documentary, activist video, and popular
Imax films. The course considers how these films circulate
within and across historical, social, and cultural spaces and
evoke discourses of "truth," "realism," and "authenticity"
through their representational forms and cross-cultural
readings. These terms are subjected to critical scrutiny
throughout the course as students come to appreciate the
paradoxical nature of the term "documentary realism." A
short mid-term essay (6-7pp; 20%) and a research paper (15pp;
60%) are required, as well as a reading response seminar
presentation (10%) and final class presentation (10%). The
midterm requires students to read two of the films screened in
class (or two pre-approved substitutes) against, alongside, or
in tension with at least two theoretical readings assigned in
class. The reading response presentation consists of a 10 minute
critical response to the week’s readings in which students lead
seminar discussion based on 3-4 ideas drawn from the readings.
An abstract for the research topic is submitted half way through
the course and a topic developed in consultation with the
professor. Syllabus available in the Certificate Programs Office
(Room 5109).
Thursdays, 6:30pm to 9:30pm.
Seminar
in Film Studies: Comedy: Method and Meaning (Professor
Morris Dickstein): This course will take a
historical, critical, and theoretical approach to the evolution
of film comedy. It will begin with short films and longer works
by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, showing how film comedy
develops from slapstick, sight gags, pantomime, farce, and other
vaudeville routines to more complex forms of drama, pathos, and
characterization. We will examine some of the major comic
performers of the 1930s, including the Marx brothers, W. C.
Fields, and Mae West, in the context of their times, and explore
works of screwball comedy by directors like Leo McCarey, Frank
Capra, Howard Hawks, and Gregory La Cava, as well as a parallel
tradition of sophisticated or cynical romantic comedy by Ernst
Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, and Billy Wilder. Along the way we’ll
compare the work of American directors to European counterparts
like Rene Clair (Le Million, A Nous la Liberte)
and Jean Renoir (Boudu Saved from Drowning, Rules of
the Game). Later material may include the work of TV
comedians like Ernie Kovacs, Lucille Ball, and Sid Caesar and
feature films such as Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964), M*A*S*H (Altman,1970), Annie Hall (Woody Allen,
1977), Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982), and My Favorite
Year (Richard Benjamin,1982). There will be readings of
works of comic literature from Shakespeare to Evelyn Waugh and
Vladimir Nabokov, along with theoretical writings on comedy by
Henri Bergson and others. Each student will be expected to
deliver one oral report and to write a 15-page research paper. Tuesdays, 6:30pm to 9:30pm.
Special
Topics in Theatre and Popular Entertainment: Carnival:
Conspicuous Street Performances in the Americas (Professor
Dale Byam): This course will examine
Afro-Carnival street performances and its attendant social and
political interpretations in the Americas, with focus on
Trinidad (brief attention will be paid to Rara in Haiti) and
Brazil. Students will gain a comprehensive understanding through
theoretical readings, memoirs/travelogues, and field visits.
Topics will include theories of Carnival and theatre and the
histories of specific Carnival movements. Readings will include
plays, novels, memoirs, and travelogues that detail the Carnival
experience in selected Caribbean countries. We will also examine
Carnival events by way of video, film, and audio presentations,
as well as interviews with practitioners, and we will visit
Caribbean-American Carnival camps in New York. The course will
use Blackboard for on-line discussion and posting of reading
materials. Each student will write a term paper of 4,000-5,000
words.
Wednesdays,
6:30pm to 8:30pm.
Seminar
in Theatre & Society: Kurt Weill and his Collaborators (Professor
David Savra): Among writers of music theatre in the twentieth century, Kurt
Weill (1900-1950) had the most wide-ranging and formidable group
of collaborators, including many of the most important
playwrights, directors, and actors working on both sides of the
Atlantic. Emigrating from Berlin to Paris to New York, Weill
transformed himself from a leftist, cosmopolitan modernist into
a proudly American innovator and populist who helped refashion
the Broadway stage. More than the work of any other composer,
Weill’s brings into focus virtually all the challenges facing
the progressive artist during the first half of the twentieth
century, including questions of political engagement, the
appropriation of popular genres and styles, the relationship
between avant-gardism and high modernism, and emigration and
exile. This course will center on these themes while tracing
Weill’s collaborations with Bertolt Brecht, Georg Kaiser, Max
Reinhardt, Lotte Lenya, Maxwell Anderson, Moss Hart, Ira
Gershwin, Gertrude Lawrence, Elmer Rice, Langston Hughes, Elia
Kazan, and others. Works to be studied include The Threepenny
Opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Der Jasager (He Who Says Yes), Der Lindberghflug (The Lindbergh Flight), Johnny Johnson, Lady in
the Dark, Street Scene, and Lost in the Stars.
Written assignments will include four response papers and a
15-page final research paper. Given the archives of the Kurt
Weill Foundation for Music in New York City, this course aims to
provide an opportunity for students to develop publishable
scholarship.
Tuesdays,
2:00pm to 5:00pm.
History
of American Theatre: New York Theatre before 1900 (Professor
Marvin Carlson): This
course will study the social, cultural, and literary development
of the stage in New York from the colonial period until 1900.
The work of major dramatists, from Royall Tyler through John
Augustus Stone, Anna Cora Mowatt, Dion Boucicault and Augustin
Daly, to Bronson Howard and Clyde Fitch will be read but also
placed in their historical context, particularly that of the
changing New York theatre scene. Special attention will be given
to the various forms of ethnic theatre and of reform and
sensational melodrama, and some attention will be given,
especially in the later nineteenth century, to such popular
forms as the minstrel show, the operetta, and vaudeville. If
possible, the class will attend performances of plays of the
period in the city presented by such groups as the Metropolitan
Playhouse. Two papers will be required.
Week 1: Colonial and Revolutionary
Week 2: 1782-1828 The early professional theatre
Week 3-4: 1818-1861 Ethnicity and Melodrama
Week 5-6: The 1860’s Melodrama and Social drama
Week 7-8-: the 1870s
Week 9-10-11: the 1880s
Week 12-13-14: the 1890s
Mondays, 2:00pm to 4:00pm.
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