Course Syllabus

Image: Kareem Khubchandani performing  as "LaWhore Vagistan"--otherwise known as “Everyone’s Favorite Academic South Asian Drag Queen Auntie.”

Prof. Catherine M. Cole

colecat@uw.edu

Office hours: by appointment on M & W from 3:30-4:30PM, in Padelford B435   

Can be in person or on Zoom. Booking:  https://calendar.app.google/EMHHsfeUZwnnJUxS7Links to an external site.

Full syllabus here. 

Tracing new directions in performance studies and performance theory, this seminar engages recent publications that illuminate just how complex and multi-layered the disciplinary intersection that goes by name “performance studies” has become by 2024. Scholars featured in this course move across the domains of dance, music, visual art, film, literature, ethnography, queer studies, disability studies, antislavery speech, nightlife, and drag. Authors include Kemi Adeyemi, Daphne Brooks, Joshua Chambers-Letson, Catherine Cole, Kareem Khubchandani, Devon Healey, Petra Kuppers, SanSan Kwan, Laura L. Mielke, José Esteban Muñoz, and Tavia Nyong’o. What do these recent books say about where the field is at now? Are we finally able to stop obsessing about what performance / performance studies is and rather focus on what, in the words of Joshua Chambers-Letson, it can do “to push us toward other horizons of livability and being”?

 Presentation Schedule

1/10 Eco Soma: Beth 

1/22 Love Dances: Kimmie

1/24 After the Party:  Keenan

1/29 Liner Notes for the Revolution: Kelly

1/31 Afro-Fabulations: Reggie

2/7 The Sense of Brown: Carter 

2/14 Feels Right: Jeremy

2/21 Ishstyle: Cameo

2/28 Dramatizing Blindness: Remy