DRAMA 581 A: Analysis of Dramatic Texts

Drama 581

Minoritarian Performance

In his 2008 monograph Cruising Utopia, performance and queer of color theorist José Esteban  Muñoz positions the term minoritarian “to index citizen-subjects who, due to antagonism within the social such as race, class, and sex, are debated within the majoritarian public sphere” (56). He writes that minoritarian performance is “both antinormative and critical of the state”; it also “transports us across symbolic space, inserting us in a coterminous time when we witness new formations within the present and the future” (56). This course surveys and interrogates minoritarian performance. Students will read critical theory and other texts attentive minoritarian performance, attend and write about performance events centering minoritiaized artists (such as Black, Indigenous, Asian Diasporic, Latinx, Queer, Differently-Abled and/or Feminist artists), and make performance as theory, research, pedagogy and creative practice. No performance experience required.  

A central course question is: How does theoretical, archival, and embodied engagement with minoriarian performance animate conversations among fields of Performance Studies, Ethnic Studies, Critical Race Studies, Gender and Sexulity Studies, Theatre History, Art History, Critical Theory, Geography, and Public Policy? The course postions conversations between theorists and artists across topics including the “burden of liveness,” Afro-presentism, racial capitalism, the sonic, sensorium, refusal, queer sociality, and trans and indigenous futures.  Course assignments include weekly discussion posts, two performance projects,  two performance analysis of live local performance events, and one final project (that can include research as performance).