LITR272

Modern and Postmodern Drama studies the major aesthetic dramatic movements of the 20th century. Students read a selection of plays and performance texts that define each period; these texts are accompanied by key theoretical writings from performers, playwrights and critics that inform and contextualize the readings; introductions from experts in the field also provide an overview of the works and their significance. ln addition, students read, discuss in class and are called to include in their papers, concepts and arguments elaborated by major theatre critics and theorists such as, Antonin Artaud, Bertold Brecht, Walter Benjamin, André Breton, Martin Esslin, Hans-Thies Lehmann, Helene Cixous, Simone Benmussa, Judith Butler and Jacques Ranciére. The course is structured around international and intercultural differences, but the readings address other categories of difference such as, class, gender, sexuality, politics and economics. We examine how the modern world, following Certeau, "produces itself through othering, through discursive and material mechanisms that effectively bifurcate regions of culture, the better to legitimate some and delegitimate others."

Arts, Humanities and Education