Course Requirements
The Ph.D. Program in Theatre requires sixty (60) hours of
approved graduate work, including acceptable transfer credits.
At least thirty (30) of these credits must be taken in residence
at The Graduate Center. Each student is further expected to
spend at least one year in full-time resident study, which will
consist of a schedule of no fewer than 12 credits or the
equivalent in Weighted Instructional Units for each of two
consecutive semesters.
All students in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre will complete
70100 (Research and Bibliography) in the first two semesters of
their program, and complete 70300 (Dramatic Structure), 70600
(Theatre Theory), and 75100 (Theatre Historiography) before
taking the First Examination. Any of these courses may be waived
(by request to the Executive Officer) if approximately
equivalent work has been taken elsewhere.
Core Curriculum
Of the 60 credits necessary for graduation, only 12 are
required. Each entering student takes four-course sequence in
theatre historiography, dramatic structure, theory, and research
and bibliography, which is called our “core curriculum.” Rather
than a survey of content, however, our core courses are taught
as seminars, focusing on methodologies with which to think about
history, for example, and on pedagogy, so that students can
gather ideas about how to teach theory and play structure.
Theatre Research and Bibliography: 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
assignments will consist of a number of exercises designed to
achieve the goals set out above. In addition, there will be a
final examination.
Theatre Historiography: The purpose of this course is
to make you aware of the changes taking place nowadays in the
writing of theatre and performance history. Some problems that
historians grapple with arise from the limits of available
evidence, others from the limits of a given method. New evidence
and new approaches can reshape fields, though they seldom make
an entirely clean sweep. We will be looking for traces of such
reshaping. Examples will come from a variety of periods and
countries. However, this is not a survey of theatre history: the
course will not proceed chronologically or attempt to cover any
area systematically. There is no book-length text for this
course. Readings for class discussion will consist of articles
or excerpts from books, chosen to demonstrate particular
approaches to the writing or rewriting of history. Written work
will be of three kinds. In the second half of the semester, each
student will be responsible for a book report (7-10 pages) that
compares and contrasts the historiography of three books on a
chosen subject. This report will also be presented orally to the
class, with examples of the strengths and weaknesses of each
study. A term paper (20-25 pages, due with the exam) on a
subject chosen by you and approved by me will give you a chance
to experience firsthand the joys and trials of creating theatre
history. An on-site final exam, practice for the First Exam,
will ask you to apply what you have learned to the task of
assessing another series of articles.
Development of Dramatic Structure: Although the
central emphasis on this course will be on systems of
organization and narration in dramatic texts, the texts studied
will also be contextualized by related theoretical, historical
and critical readings. Normally two plays will be read, with
accompanying background material, for each class. The plays will
be selected in order to provide examples of the organization of
dramatic material from a wide variety of national traditions and
historical periods. Groupings of plays will seek to reveal
structural choices by their differing treatments of similar
narrative source material (such as the Antigone story), similar
thematic material (such as political conflict, thwarted love),
similar generic expectations (journey drama, tragicomedy) or
similar overarching selection of material (carnivalization,
intertextuality). The course will consider not only the
functional relationships, internal and external, in the works
studied, not only in their time of origin, but as the works
through performance and other interpretation, have moved through
history. Three papers will be required, each a structural
analysis of a play not studied in class.
History of Theatrical Theory: The course will open
with a discussion of what constitutes theatrical theory and then
introduce selected contemporary approaches, topoi, methodologies
and perspectives such as the body; nation, nationalism, and
national identity; character and identity; audience response;
and mimesis, thereby enabling us to follow the ongoing dialogue
about these issues as it has evolved and to investigate the
origins of current controversies. The through line of action for
the course will be the major critical issue of mimesis and
anti-mimesis (encompassing the problem of representation) that
dominates the history of theatrical theory. The aim will be to
examine the concept of mimesis and its assumptions, its
connections to nature, culture, and the social order, its moral
utility and didactic uses (including political control and
national aggrandizement), and the ontological status of what is
represented. Discussion will include subsidiary concepts
generated by mimesis, such as decorum, character, probability,
unity, and the separation and hierarchy of genres. The relation
of art and life has been a perennial concern of aesthetics.
Theatre as representation/reflection of reality has engendered
particularly lively critical debate because of the immediacy of
“live” performance and its impact on audiences. In the earliest
document introducing the groundwork for later theatrical theory,
Plato's Republic, mimesis comes under attach as false
epistemologically and dangerous morally. Those subsequently
defending mimesis, like Aristotle, must respond to these charges
and discover a new basis of justification. The Christian church
revived and expanded the scope of the assault on mimesis.
Renaissance reformulations of classical mimesis produced the
“new” doctrine of the imitation of nature, which held sway into
the late eighteenth century. In traditional Asian theatrical
theory, for example, in the Natyasastra and Zeami (“monomane”),
imitation has also been a central concept. The sweeping
rejection of mimesis in romantic theory anticipates most of the
contemporary critique of imitation based on structuralist and
poststructuralist conceptions of language. A new defense of
mimesis as a challenge to the status quo was made by Zola and
the naturalists, followed by an acceptance of realism (in its
illusionist version) as the preferred mode by the bourgeois
theatre of commerce and the totalitarian right and left, fascist
and communist. The symbolists, their heirs and the
twentieth-century avant-gardes have continued the battle against
mimesis as the aesthetic of the dominant establishment and
offered alternative styles in abstraction, discontinuity,
disruption, and indeterminancy. In recent times semiotics,
feminism, and deconstruction have furthered exposure of the
ideological underpinnings of mimesis and of the contradictions
at the heart of its claims to truth-telling. At the same time
various neo-realisms, freed of earlier commitments to scientific
objectivity, have attempted to re-instate mimesis as a flexible
theatrical mode.
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