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Graduate SEMINARS
The graduate faculty aims to provide, over the course of three years, a series of seminars that boast a wide range of subjects, theories, and methodologies, the better not only to prepare graduate students for their comprehensive examinations but to familiarize them with important trends in the exciting and evolving field of theater studies. In consultation with the Graduate Advisor, doctoral students normally take two graduate seminars per quarter in a program designed to answer to their research needs (which may or may not include studying outside the Department of Theater). Fellowship recipients usually carry a load of two courses per quarter; and M.A. students usually take one or more seminars per quarter. A representative sampling of recent and future graduate seminars appears below:
RECENT AND FUTURE GRADUATE SEMINARS
Caribbean Re-Possessions: Intercultural and Post-Colonial Performances, with Leo Cabranes-Grant
The purpose of this seminar is to understand Caribbean plays (Césaire, Walcott, Lovelace, Scott, Rhone, Schwarz-Bart) and performances (carnival, calypso) in their own terms, while fostering a dialogue with recent developments in intercultural and post-colonial studies (Lamming, Benítez Rojo, Ortiz, Glissant, Said, Mbembe, Spivak, Bhabha). Distinctions between orature and writing will be particularly showcased.
Medieval Performance Studies, with Jody Enders
One of the most exciting of contemporary critical movements, "performance studies" has dramatically expanded traditional notions of about the theory and practice of the living art of theater. As we trace the rich history of the medieval theater, from the liturgy, to biblical miracles, to monumental Passion plays, to raucous French farces, we analyze from the comparative perspective of several national "literatures" just what it means to represent and, most importantly, to perform: be it on the stage, in the church, in the courtroom, in the classroom, in the sporting arena, or in the seemingly endless medieval venues that constituted what Michel de Certeau might have called a veritable "theater of everyday life."
Gender and East Asian Performance, with Suk-Young Kim
This course explores the shifting boundaries between the notions of male and female, and the ways in which such gendered identities and performance interact in the most crucial moments of theater history in China, Japan, and Korea from antiquity to contemporary times. Topics include gendered movements and stage role types, bans on female performers, male and female impersonations, homoeroticism in spectatorship, socialist revolution, and gender reform. Students will read key dramatic texts, critical writings on performance, learn about important genres (Yuan variety plays, Beijing Opera, No, Kabuki, Takarazuka, Korean Pansori and shaman rituals), performance techniques, and performing environment. The course looks at the correlations between gender and performance not only as a question limited to traditional theater environments, but also as being deeply rooted in historical events and social practices, such as marriage customs, family structure, semiotics of space, medical practice, and the construction of modernity in East Asia.
Performance of Physicality, with Suk-Young Kim
Drawing on the work of such scholars as Judith Butler, Xiaomei Chen, Michel Foucault, Ayako Kano, Dorrine Kondo, Susan Manning, and Diana Taylor, this course explores various case studies across cultures of the theatrical representation and perception of the human body, most notably, in Europe, the Americas, and Asia in the 20th Century. As physicality emerges from a constant interaction between the production and consumption of performances centered on human bodies (theater, dance, sports, fashion, etc.), physicality often becomes a standard for measuring respectability in a given society and culture. Students will rethink the relationship between theater and other genres as they explore what constitutes "respectable" physicality across cultural borders, especially insofar as it serves the construction of gender, race, class, nation, and sexuality.
Melodrama and Money, with W. Davies King
This seminar is an examination of the roots of Broadway and its legacy of profitable drama. How did an already outmoded European form of drama become the new theology of American commercialism? This seminar operates in dialogue with another that I taught recently, concerning Eugene O'Neill's uneasy relation to melodrama.
Dramatic Theory: The Iron Age to Frye and Beyond, with W. Davies King
Originally taught by the late Bert O. States, formerly a professor in this department, this seminar is an examination of major texts of dramatic theory and criticism, from Aristotle. Now it begins with the cave paintings at Lascaux and ends with Bert O. States himself, with many of the usual Aristotelian-tradition stops in between.
Don Juan Through the Ages, with Carlos Morton
This seminar explores dramatic manifestations of the Don Juan theme (including history and criticism) from Tirso de Molina, Moliere, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Jose Zorrilla, and into the 20th century with Shaw, Brecht, Derek Walcott, C. Morton, Octavio Solis and Anne Garcia-Romero.
The History and Theory of Directing, with Simon Williams
Readings in the major theorists of directing and in the history of directing in the modern and contemporary theatre. Emphasis is upon the rise of the director as "auteur" and upon the challenge mounted by directors to the centrality of the dramatic text. Readings include, but are not confined to Appia, Artaud, Beck, Boal, Bogart, Brook, Copeau, Craig, Foreman, Grotowski, Jessner, Meyerhold, Mnouchkine, Sellars, Stanislavsky, and Wilson.
Theatre and Literature, with Simon Williams
A study of the treatment of theatre in prose literature and drama over the last 400 years. Focus is upon the "reliability" of theatre as representative medium and as way of life. The nature of the actor and of acting is an especially prominent theme. Readings include, but are not confined to works by Beaumont and Fletcher, Chekhov, Corneille, Goethe, Hoffmann, Hofmannsthal, James, Kierkegaard, Mann, Maugham, Nelson, Renault, Shakespeare, Sher, Sheridan, and Unsworth.
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| The Consortium for Literature, Theory & Culture |
The CLTC brings together faculty and graduate students from the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as affiliates from other disciplines, to advance collaborative research in literary studies. While grounded in the study of national literary traditions, it seeks to encourage interdisciplinary and theoretical reflections on literature and culture in global and comparative contexts.
Through graduate curricula, research projects, colloquia and lectures, the Consortium encourages dialogue among faculty and students from various departments. It allows graduate students in particular to enter into a research community in which they can benefit from the remarkable strengths in literary studies at UCSB, where there are over eighty-five professors teaching literature in the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts alone. The Consortium also awards fellowships to incoming graduate students and dissertation stipends to advanced students whose work engages in theoretical and interdisciplinary topics in literary studies.
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