Spring 2005

Course Descriptions

THEA 70300 - Development of Dramatic Structure (Professor David Willinger): This course is designed to familiarize students with a range of dramatic structures in western theatre (for the most part). The primary objective is to expand our understanding of dramatic form and function, while helping to prepare students to negotiate their first-level exams. The course cuts across genres, theatrical styles, historical periods, and national theatres. Each week's readings will consist of an assortment of plays and critical studies. There will be a minimum of one short paper and a longer comparative one on other plays, as well as, perhaps, a final exam with oral and essay components, taken in class on the day of the scheduled exam.
[Course Code = 66036]. Mondays, 4:15 pm to 6:15 pm.

THEA 70600 - History of Theatrical Theory (Professor Jean Graham Jones): This course has two objectives: to introduce students to theatrical theory and to examine other theories that have influenced contemporary theatre and cultural studies. The course will begin with a discussion of what constitutes theatrical theory and then proceed modularly to examine such key theatrical and performance concepts as representation, mimesis, character and identity, genre, and audience response. A modular structure will allow us to follow and create ongoing dialogues about these concepts as they have evolved. The second objective of the course will be met through, again, a modular approach to the presentation and discussion of such influential critical / cultural theories as formalism and structuralism, semiotics, post-structuralism, feminism, and post-colonialism, as well as other disciplinary approaches—coming from, for instance, anthropology, sociology, and psychology—that have transformed theatre studies. Requirements include two projects: an annotated bibliography and a short research paper- one due at midterm and the other due at the end of the semester - as well as a 15-minute individual oral examination at the end of the course. Only a few texts will be ordered; most readings will be placed on reserve
[Course Code = 66037]. Wednesdays, 4:15 pm to 6:15 pm.

THEA 80300 - Seminar in Theatre Theory and Criticism: Performance in Empire (Professor Maurya Wickstrom): An exploration of fresh sources for theoretical and practical interventions in performance and its study. The suggestions in Jon McKenzie's Perform or Else and Hardt and Negri's Empire about contemporary formations of power will be used as a guiding framework. A range of scholars, from Terry Eagleton to Martha Nussbaum, to Jill Dolan, to Alain Badiou, will be studied for their critiques of postmodern theory as it has been absorbed into the workings of capital, and the emergent alternative languages they suggest; the "prophetic speech" of theology, a resurgence of the human, the possibilities of hope and an ethic of "contentment," the "event," and "utopia," among others. Students will be required to apply theoretical work to a particular performance work, or to a social formation that can be understood as performance
[Course Code = 66038]. Tuesdays, 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm.

THEA 81400 - Studies in the Current Season (Professor David Savran): What is the state of theatre in New York today? How does theatre function (or malfunction)? How are theatrical practices and venues hierarchized? What is the difference between profit and nonprofit theatre, Broadway and Off Broadway? Is there such a thing today as an avant-garde? What role do the critics have in supporting—and sabotaging—particular kinds of theatrical activities? In this course we will attempt to answer these and other questions about theatre’s place and function in contemporary cultural and social formations. Introductory readings will include essays on the history of New York theatre, on the sociology of theatre, and on commodity culture. Most of the course, however, will be organized around eight or nine productions taking place in New York which we will attend. Students should expect to spend between $200 and $300 on theatre tickets. In most cases we will read the script, critical and theoretical material about the play and playwright, reviews, and assorted contextual materials. The plays to be studied will likely include The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, Hot ‘n’ Throbbing by Paula Vogel, House/Lights by the Wooster Group, Pacific Overtures by Stephen Sondheim, Happy Days by Samuel Beckett, The Light in the Piazza by Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas, and The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh. Assignments will include short response papers and a final research paper on a topic of your choosing.  [Course Code = 66039]. Thursdays, 4:15 pm to 6:15 pm.

THEA 81500 - Seminar in Film Studies: Pageantry and Power: Film as Historical Narrative (Professor Robert Singer): This course will focus on the role of filmmaker as historian. The historical film links the spectator to the past in the present. This course will examine questions associated with the production of meaning in the historical film narrative, in particular, how do spectacle, performance, and simulation generate a text that is more than an exercise in symbolic realism or factual reproduction? We will examine the process and product of interdisciplinary intersections in representative films, from the turn-of-the century actualités of Méliès and the Edison Studio, to Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters (2002). Students will engage related disciplines, such as psychology, political science, and literature, among others, while specifically focusing on traditional historical research and practices in relationship to film history and theory. We will analyze issues involving historical figures, eras and movements, in relationship to diverse film genre, the studio "blockbuster," the traditional dramatic narrative, and the independent film production. I have not included documentary film. Films to be studied, whole or in part: Introduction The "History/Film"--a critical overview: LumiPre/Méliès/Edison actualités, Judith of Bethulia, Asoka, The Magdalene Sisters; A Case Study: Richard the Third (1911, 1912, 1955, 1995), Nixon Genre Western: My Darling Clementine, Hour of the Gun, Doc, Tombstone, Wyatt Earp Crime: Ma Barker's Killer Brood, Bonnie Parker Story, Bonnie and Clyde, Bandit Queen Religion: Ten Commandments, Greatest Story Ever Told, Mohammed, Messenger of God, Last Temptation of Christ Bio/Pic: Rosa Luxemburg, Gorillas in the Mist, Danton, Malcolm X, Nasser 56 War: Mephisto, Casualties of War, Hamsun, Amen Reel Representations Assassination: Z, The Assassination of Trotsky, JFK, Lumumba Revolution/Decay: Fall of the Roman Empire, Bloody Sunday, Four Days in September, La Commune, Paris 1871. Political Scandal: Stavisky, All the President's Men, Scandal, Tora, Tora, Tora Social Otherness: The Blum Affair, I Accuse, The Jew, Dreyfus Sexual Otherness: Aimee & Jaguar, Swoon, I, the Worst of All, Wilde Imaginary History: Duck Soup, Zelig, Scarlet Empress, Our Hitler Myth/Revisionism: The Right Stuff, Amistad, Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers Reading selections will include (excerpted texts): Foner's Who Owns History?: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World, White's Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect and Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, Sorlin's The Film in History: Restaging the Past, Shapiro's Atomic Bomb Cinema: the Apocalyptic Imagination on Film, Landy's The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media, Cartmell's Retrovisions: Reinventing the Past in Film and Fiction, Walker's Westerns: Films Through History, Toplin's Oliver Stone's USA: Film, History, and Controversy, Stam and Miller's A Companion to Film Theory and Film and Theory: An Anthology, Burke's The French Historical Revolution: the Annales School, 1929-89, Smith's The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice, Stam's Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film, Howell's From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods, plus reading selections on individual films. Students will be assigned an end-term project evolving from an interpretation and analysis of course material that the student will develop with the instructor. Students are encouraged to engage in discussion of the films and material throughout the course, and students will be asked to make a class presentation (approx.15 mins.)
[Course Code = 66040]. Thursdays, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm.

THEA 81500 - Seminar in Film Studies: Realism and Cinema (Professor Ivone Margulies): Realism is a key aesthetic and critical category in film studies. This course examines a number of realist films from the post-war to the present, alongside major theoretical and critical texts. We will consider films and realist theories historically. We will start with a discussion of the question of indexicality in cinema; Andre Bazin’s formulations on the realist vocation of cinema and how his realist aesthetics accommodates Jean Renoir, neorealist cinema, Orson Welles, and William Wyler. The second half of the course considers historical representation and the relations of cinema to extra-textual referents; cinema verite and its relations to post-war existentialism; the notion of social representativeness and type in Godard and Akerman. The course ends with a discussion of contemporary forms of realist cinema, in particular Abbas Kiarostami’s reflexive realism in his Kolker Trilogy —Where is my Friend’s House, Life and Nothing But, and Under the Olive Trees. Requirements and grades: Two page proposal for the final paper due on the 7th week of class (15 percent; Final Paper: due a week after the last day of class (20 double spaced pages). You may use any of the class required or recommended readings as your theoretical or historical background (60 percent); Class presentations: students may either present a critical summary of that week’s readings or present an excerpt from a film explaining its applicability in a given realist argument.( 15 percent). Required readings: What is Cinema Vol. I. And II.; Jean Renoir; Bazin at Work, "Death Every Afternoon" Bazin; Springtime in Italy: A Reader in Neorealism, ed. David Overbey (by week 6); "Introduction to Versimilitude," Todorov; "Realism or Naturalism," Raymond Williams; "Realism and The Cinema: Some Brechtian Theses," MacCabe; Realism, Linda Nochlin; Dziga Vertov’s Writings; "On realism" Brecht; "Visual Anthropology in a Discourse of Words" Mead "Idea and Event in Urban Cinema; Observational Cinema. (by week 9). Assigned readings are on reserve in the library. Schedule and bibliography are available in the Certificate Programs Office, Room 5109.  [Course Code = 66041]. Mondays, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm.

THEA 81600 - Seminar in Film Theory (Professor William Boddy): This course will provide an overview of classical and contemporary film theory. Writers whose contributions to the field will be examined include Eisenstein, Arnheim, Epstein, Balazs, Bazin, Merleau-Ponty, and Kracauer, among the earlier figures, and such contemporary theorists as Metz, Mitry, Baudry, Mulvey, Heath, and Carroll. Questions about the structure and function of the filmic "text," the nature of cinematic representation and film spectatorship raised by various schools of thought, including phenomenology, Marxism, semiology, psychoanalysis, and feminism will be considered. Although attention is largely on primary theoretical writings, secondary texts and films that help to contextualize specific theories will be used as well.Required texts for the class include selections from Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings Fifth Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Robert Stam and Toby Miller, eds., Film and Theory: An Anthology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000); Toby Miller and Robert Stam, eds., A Companion to Film Theory (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999); Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, eds., Reinventing Film Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, Film Studies: Critical Approaches (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). In addition to participating in class discussion, students will write several brief essays responding to the readings, lead discussion of selected readings, and prepare a research project, culminating in a 12-15 page paper and a seminar presentation.
[Course Code = 66042]. Wednesdays, 4:15 pm to 6:15 pm.

THEA 85400 - Seminar in Comparative Drama: Theatre and Drama of the Middle East (Professor Marvin Carlson): Although the Arab world is thought by many Westerners to possess little or no theatre, a complex and thriving international drama has in fact developed there since the middle of the nineteenth century, anticipated by medieval passion plays in Persia and by shadow and puppet plays from as early as the eleventh century. Pre-state theatres were established by the 1930s in Israel, and a major theatre has developed in that nation since statehood. This course will provide a brief survey of theatre in this region since the middle ages, and will the focus on the twentieth-century theatre of the major traditions in the area, in Egypt, Syria, and Israel. Major dramatists from these countries such as Tawfik al-Hakim, Sadallah Wannus, and Yehohua Sobol will be read, along with representative dramas from other states in the region such as Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Tunisia, and Kuwait. The course will consider how socio-political concerns, from colonialism to current conflicts, have operated on the theatre of this region, and such matters as levels of language and the use of history, religion, mythology, and folk material in this drama will also be considered. All material for the course will be read in English translation. Required texts: Jayyusi and Allen, Modern Arabic Drama, 1995; Michael Taub, Modern Israeli Drama in Translation, 1993. 2 papers will be required.
[Course Code = 66043]. Mondays, 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm.

THEA 86100 - History of American Theatre: The Theatre and Performances of the Harlem Renaissance, 1916-1932 (Professor James Hatch): Texts: Black Theatre USA, The Early Period 1847-1938, Vol. I, Hatch and Shine, Free Press (paper). Choose one: either Lost Plays of the Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1940, Hatch and Hamalian, Wayne State (paper), or The Roots of African American Drama, Hamalian and Hatch, Wayne State (paper). We will read plays written and produced by Blacks and by Whites and discuss key articles and essays published in the period and after. This class will examine the racial, social, and economic issues that created one of the most exciting periods of American theatre. In addition to weekly reading assignments, one written report will be assigned. Topics to be addressed: How were folk themes and black culture exploited? Why was black performance popular and with whom? The White man’s Harlem Renaissance: what was it? How and why did Whites promote the theatre of Blacks? What were the influences of the black middle class? In black plays of protest, what were the issues at stake? How did the plays attack white racism as well as racism within the black community? How did Africa become an issue of homeland pride? What were the relationships of satire and comedy to class? Who were the key black writers, producers, actors? What theatre groups were formed and what were their philosophies? Why was the Harlem Renaissance a national phenomenon named for one small community? What were its influences in white America and in Europe? You will have a choice for final projects:
1. An original research paper that could be published.
2. An oral history with a black performer(s), an annotated transcription of the issues involved. (Subject requires instructor’s approval). 3. Reading and photocopying of articles and reviews in a black newspaper and journal of the period with a written evaluation (Subject requires instructor’s approval).
The final product of #s 2 and 3 must be a research paper
[Course Code = 66044]. Tuesdays, 4:15 pm to 6:15 pm.