DRAMA 585 A: Seminar in Dramatic Theory

Performance Ethnography

Mondays and Wednesdays, 3:30 - 5:20pm

What are the methods for observing, engaging, and embodying culture? How does the lens of performance -- as embodied action, practice, and repertoire -- deepen methods attentive to aesthetics, expressive cultures, sensorium, and geography? These questions root this course on performance ethnography, which aligns ethnography -- the method of studying culture (often through observation, fieldwork, and interviews) -- with the interdisciplinary lens of performance. The study and practice of performance ethnography will illuminate the role of aesthetics, theatricality, and elements of drama in culture, and attend to how critical theories attuned to the body, race, gender, sexuality, class, and place animate culture.  

Readings cover ethnographic methods (including critical, dance, and performance ethnography), and include ethnographic texts that consider performance in dialogue with geography, race, gender, sexuality, aesthetics, and form, as well as ethics. Throughout the course, students will practice ethnographic methods (including observation, writing field notes, conducting interviews, documenting sensorium, and staging embodied performance) in support of a final ethnographic research paper.