Module description
In this module, we will explore a range of performance works and theoretical texts that take up gender and its intersections as a central inquiry. You will be encouraged to think about how gender is represented and/or 'troubled' through theatre, live art, installation, photography, video work and in the performance of everyday life, and will develop modes of analysing how performance produces specific meanings and effects through both textual and non-verbal (visual, gestural, sonic and other) means. Through exploring a theory of gender as performed rather than innate, we will look closely at how it is enabled and constrained by specific material conditions, particularly those that have relatedly shaped the construction of race, disability, sexual norms and colonial subject positions. Indicative topics may include: crip theory and performance; labour, domesticity and "women's work"; drag and theatricality; race, masculinity and nationhood; decolonial feminisms.
Assessment details
1000 word blog post (30%), 2000 word essay (70%)
Learning outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- demonstrate knowledge and understanding of a range of performance genres and practices concerned with gender and its intersections, with detailed attention to how performance produces specific meanings and effects
- deploy 'performance' as a methodological framework in order to analyse how gender is constructed, maintained and transformed
- develop and investigate nuanced questions about the interrelations of gender and performance, through written analysis and seminar-based discussion
Teaching pattern
one 2-hour seminar weekly