This project presents a syllabus that emerged out of an ongoing set of discussions between the two co-authors about how Black, Southern theatre and performance traditions—as well as embodied and transmitted genealogies of community engagement and activism—informed the intellectual, social, and political commitments that have suffused performance studies from its origins as an academic discipline. These discussions allowed us to generate a syllabus that provides the raw materials for an alternative and potentially radically destabilizing pedagogical approach to narrating the historical roots and development of performance studies over the past half-century. Specifically, we ask what shifts might occur in the performance studies classroom by narrating the field’s origins through the Free Southern Theatre, founded as a multiracial artistic ensemble in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1964. Our syllabus incorporates the key strands woven into the Free Southern Theatre’s aesthetic and political interventions, including Africanist cultural forms (such as the story circle); influences from the artistic and theatrical avant-garde; and populist theatre projects that developed in tandem with the revolutionary energies of the anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist struggles of the student movements of the 1960s. We ask how these largely hidden histories of resistance and dramaturgies of evasion reorient the way performance studies syllabi of the future tell the story of who and what matters, and in so doing materialize pedagogies of field formation that get frozen in place.
{"title":"The Unwieldy Otherwise: Rethinking the Roots of Performance Studies in and through the Black Freedom Struggle","authors":"Leon J. Hilton, Mariahdessa Ekere Tallie","doi":"10.7202/1099878ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1099878ar","url":null,"abstract":"This project presents a syllabus that emerged out of an ongoing set of discussions between the two co-authors about how Black, Southern theatre and performance traditions—as well as embodied and transmitted genealogies of community engagement and activism—informed the intellectual, social, and political commitments that have suffused performance studies from its origins as an academic discipline. These discussions allowed us to generate a syllabus that provides the raw materials for an alternative and potentially radically destabilizing pedagogical approach to narrating the historical roots and development of performance studies over the past half-century. Specifically, we ask what shifts might occur in the performance studies classroom by narrating the field’s origins through the Free Southern Theatre, founded as a multiracial artistic ensemble in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1964. Our syllabus incorporates the key strands woven into the Free Southern Theatre’s aesthetic and political interventions, including Africanist cultural forms (such as the story circle); influences from the artistic and theatrical avant-garde; and populist theatre projects that developed in tandem with the revolutionary energies of the anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist struggles of the student movements of the 1960s. We ask how these largely hidden histories of resistance and dramaturgies of evasion reorient the way performance studies syllabi of the future tell the story of who and what matters, and in so doing materialize pedagogies of field formation that get frozen in place.","PeriodicalId":212884,"journal":{"name":"The Syllabus is the Thing: Materialities of the Performance Studies Classroom","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116635977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article describes my experiences navigating the terrain of pandemic pedagogy in the 2020–21 academic year. I examine three artifacts derived from classroom instructional materials to excavate and preserve that year's emotional, intellectual, and creative labour. These artifacts reveal strategies I developed to make students' experiences of the pandemic the site of critical and creative inquiry. This essay argues that validation of the grief and loss students were experiencing became critical to successful teaching, especially for those in the performing arts.
{"title":"Pandemic Pedagogy: Snapshots from a Year of COVID-Impacted Teaching in Three Artifacts","authors":"S. Green","doi":"10.7202/1099886ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1099886ar","url":null,"abstract":"This article describes my experiences navigating the terrain of pandemic pedagogy in the 2020–21 academic year. I examine three artifacts derived from classroom instructional materials to excavate and preserve that year's emotional, intellectual, and creative labour. These artifacts reveal strategies I developed to make students' experiences of the pandemic the site of critical and creative inquiry. This essay argues that validation of the grief and loss students were experiencing became critical to successful teaching, especially for those in the performing arts.","PeriodicalId":212884,"journal":{"name":"The Syllabus is the Thing: Materialities of the Performance Studies Classroom","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128503727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay discusses a course I taught in 2021 at the University of Texas at Austin. The course, titled “The Politics of Refusal,” was prompted by my interest in exploring how pain, debility, and suffering, usually understood as limited and passive experiences, might also be generative and disruptive. The essay reflects on the trajectory of the class as the semester progressed. In particular, I pay attention to the dynamics of discussion as they relate to students’ relationship to theory and to disability and care. I consider what worked, what needed rethinking, and what possibilities were opened up for imagining new and creative ways to approach teaching theory during the COVID-19 pandemic.
{"title":"Pedagogies of Negation","authors":"Michelle C. Velasquez-Potts","doi":"10.7202/1099885ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1099885ar","url":null,"abstract":"This essay discusses a course I taught in 2021 at the University of Texas at Austin. The course, titled “The Politics of Refusal,” was prompted by my interest in exploring how pain, debility, and suffering, usually understood as limited and passive experiences, might also be generative and disruptive. The essay reflects on the trajectory of the class as the semester progressed. In particular, I pay attention to the dynamics of discussion as they relate to students’ relationship to theory and to disability and care. I consider what worked, what needed rethinking, and what possibilities were opened up for imagining new and creative ways to approach teaching theory during the COVID-19 pandemic.","PeriodicalId":212884,"journal":{"name":"The Syllabus is the Thing: Materialities of the Performance Studies Classroom","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130909340","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article discusses my pedagogies of praxis in the performance studies classroom focused on identity, inclusion, and social justice. I especially consider methodologies I employ in seminars focused on analyzing and making social justice performances such as Performing Human Rights and Performing Activism. This discussion explores the significance of embodied ways of learning and the materialities of the performance studies classroom. I argue that such praxis—which combines foundational and cutting-edge theories in the field, analysis of sites of performance that exemplify such work, and affective exercises that allow students to embody these theories through their lived experience—creates the most meaningful learning outcomes. I discuss various exercises I developed which offer up a material trace of the embodied, praxis-oriented pedagogy that I centre in my seminars focused on analyzing and making social justice performances.
{"title":"Pedagogies of Praxis: Exercises in Embodying Social Justice for Performance Studies Seminars","authors":"Serap Erincin","doi":"10.7202/1099888ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1099888ar","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses my pedagogies of praxis in the performance studies classroom focused on identity, inclusion, and social justice. I especially consider methodologies I employ in seminars focused on analyzing and making social justice performances such as Performing Human Rights and Performing Activism. This discussion explores the significance of embodied ways of learning and the materialities of the performance studies classroom. I argue that such praxis—which combines foundational and cutting-edge theories in the field, analysis of sites of performance that exemplify such work, and affective exercises that allow students to embody these theories through their lived experience—creates the most meaningful learning outcomes. I discuss various exercises I developed which offer up a material trace of the embodied, praxis-oriented pedagogy that I centre in my seminars focused on analyzing and making social justice performances.","PeriodicalId":212884,"journal":{"name":"The Syllabus is the Thing: Materialities of the Performance Studies Classroom","volume":"120 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133826238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A reflection on the serious work and pressing exigencies of interdisciplinary teaching at the intersection of media studies, performance studies, and race and ethnic studies, this syllabus is both a portrait of pandemic pedagogy and a reflection of the work of friendship and mutual struggle.
{"title":"Syllabus for Race, Performance, and Media Studies","authors":"M. Petty, J. Chambers-Letson","doi":"10.7202/1099877ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1099877ar","url":null,"abstract":"A reflection on the serious work and pressing exigencies of interdisciplinary teaching at the intersection of media studies, performance studies, and race and ethnic studies, this syllabus is both a portrait of pandemic pedagogy and a reflection of the work of friendship and mutual struggle.","PeriodicalId":212884,"journal":{"name":"The Syllabus is the Thing: Materialities of the Performance Studies Classroom","volume":"23 12","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114115217","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
D. Chapman, J. Dellecave, Adanna Kai Jones, S. Kivenko, Mario LaMothe, Lailye Weidman, Q. M. Zabriskie
Un/Commoning Pedagogies Collective are seven dancer-scholars who centre embodied anti-racist praxis in our teaching across the fields of anthropology, sociology, African American and Africana studies, gender, sexuality and women’s studies, dance, and performance studies. Since 2019, the Un/Commoning Pedagogies Collective has engaged in consistent, process-based collaboration around teaching, scholarship, movement practice, and collegiality. We have co-authored essays, facilitated workshops, and given talks and performances. We also share syllabi, strategies, stories, milestones, failures, resources, and friendship. This writing is rooted in our ongoing collaborations and documents a co-generation of knowledge about the possibilities and tensions of teaching with and through our full-bodied selves. Moving beyond the syllabus, we offer you a glimpse into our concerns, commitments, experiences, and strategies as movement educators. We invite you to participate with us in a process of un/commoning pedagogy through embodied practice, dialogue, and reflection.
{"title":"Un/Commoning Pedagogies: Forging Collectivity Through Difference in the Embodied Classroom and Beyond","authors":"D. Chapman, J. Dellecave, Adanna Kai Jones, S. Kivenko, Mario LaMothe, Lailye Weidman, Q. M. Zabriskie","doi":"10.7202/1099883ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1099883ar","url":null,"abstract":"Un/Commoning Pedagogies Collective are seven dancer-scholars who centre embodied anti-racist praxis in our teaching across the fields of anthropology, sociology, African American and Africana studies, gender, sexuality and women’s studies, dance, and performance studies. Since 2019, the Un/Commoning Pedagogies Collective has engaged in consistent, process-based collaboration around teaching, scholarship, movement practice, and collegiality. We have co-authored essays, facilitated workshops, and given talks and performances. We also share syllabi, strategies, stories, milestones, failures, resources, and friendship. This writing is rooted in our ongoing collaborations and documents a co-generation of knowledge about the possibilities and tensions of teaching with and through our full-bodied selves. Moving beyond the syllabus, we offer you a glimpse into our concerns, commitments, experiences, and strategies as movement educators. We invite you to participate with us in a process of un/commoning pedagogy through embodied practice, dialogue, and reflection.","PeriodicalId":212884,"journal":{"name":"The Syllabus is the Thing: Materialities of the Performance Studies Classroom","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121270060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores how writing occurs within pedgagogical practice and examines the possibilty of the handout as an experimental genre.
本文探讨了写作是如何在教学实践中发生的，并探讨了讲义作为一种实验体裁的可能性。
{"title":"Four Handouts","authors":"E. Philbrick","doi":"10.7202/1099884ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1099884ar","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how writing occurs within pedgagogical practice and examines the possibilty of the handout as an experimental genre.","PeriodicalId":212884,"journal":{"name":"The Syllabus is the Thing: Materialities of the Performance Studies Classroom","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123966788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
How do activists in Latin America fight for change both online and in the streets? This piece narrates a course on Feminist Protest and Performance in Latin America that explores the limits and possibilities of feminist activism in physical and digital spaces. At this critical historical juncture, feminists across the hemisphere are organizing en masse to demand change and justice, to denounce pervasive misogyny and gender violence, and to envision and realize another world. Drawing on a long history of struggle, they are engaging in performance artivism across multiple platforms including Las Tesis piece El Violador Eres Tu (The rapist is you), under the hashtags #NiUnaMenos (#NotOneWomanLess) and #AbortoLegalYa (#LegalizeAbortionNow), and in massive physical occupations and protests like #OcupaEscola (#OccupyTheSchools). They are mobilizing to condemn femicide, to advocate access to legal abortions in public hospitals, and to introduce comprehensive sex education in public schools. Drawing on these interconnected forms of performance and protest, what Marcela Fuentes refers to as “performance constellations,” women and disidencias sexuales are fighting together for the right to live without fear, to make decisions about their own bodies, and to exist in a more just world. This class asks students to learn from Latin American feminst movements and to connect their insights to our intimate and collective experiences. Beyond the syllabus, this piece offers reflections on the philosophy of co-teaching, transnational activism across the Americas, and modes of embodiment that can happen online. We invite students and educators alike to consider what it might mean to “perform well” in a university class focused on pleasure and solidarity.
{"title":"Performance, Protest, and Feminism in Latin America","authors":"Cara Snyder, Sabrina González","doi":"10.7202/1099879ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1099879ar","url":null,"abstract":"How do activists in Latin America fight for change both online and in the streets? This piece narrates a course on Feminist Protest and Performance in Latin America that explores the limits and possibilities of feminist activism in physical and digital spaces. At this critical historical juncture, feminists across the hemisphere are organizing en masse to demand change and justice, to denounce pervasive misogyny and gender violence, and to envision and realize another world. Drawing on a long history of struggle, they are engaging in performance artivism across multiple platforms including Las Tesis piece El Violador Eres Tu (The rapist is you), under the hashtags #NiUnaMenos (#NotOneWomanLess) and #AbortoLegalYa (#LegalizeAbortionNow), and in massive physical occupations and protests like #OcupaEscola (#OccupyTheSchools). They are mobilizing to condemn femicide, to advocate access to legal abortions in public hospitals, and to introduce comprehensive sex education in public schools. Drawing on these interconnected forms of performance and protest, what Marcela Fuentes refers to as “performance constellations,” women and disidencias sexuales are fighting together for the right to live without fear, to make decisions about their own bodies, and to exist in a more just world. This class asks students to learn from Latin American feminst movements and to connect their insights to our intimate and collective experiences. Beyond the syllabus, this piece offers reflections on the philosophy of co-teaching, transnational activism across the Americas, and modes of embodiment that can happen online. We invite students and educators alike to consider what it might mean to “perform well” in a university class focused on pleasure and solidarity.","PeriodicalId":212884,"journal":{"name":"The Syllabus is the Thing: Materialities of the Performance Studies Classroom","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125665588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This annotated syllabus proposes an undergraduate course designed to develop dramaturgical methods around a common theme. While the course focuses on performances in and around bathtubs, the ultimate goal of this essay is to put forward methods that can be applied across an expansive range of theatre and performance studies topics. Each unit in the proposed course explores a different facet of dramaturgical practice with corresponding assignments that challenge students to practise essential research, writing, and communication skills. These assignments culminate in a final project: the presentation of students’ own devised bathtub performances. This syllabus, aiming toward a restorative pedagogy, imagines a future in-person classroom where students can collectively explore the relationship between public and private through bathtubs as a microcosm for the complexity of human experience.
{"title":"Bathtub Dramaturgy: An Experimental Syllabus for Theatre and Performance Studies Classrooms","authors":"C. R. Edmonson","doi":"10.7202/1099889ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1099889ar","url":null,"abstract":"This annotated syllabus proposes an undergraduate course designed to develop dramaturgical methods around a common theme. While the course focuses on performances in and around bathtubs, the ultimate goal of this essay is to put forward methods that can be applied across an expansive range of theatre and performance studies topics. Each unit in the proposed course explores a different facet of dramaturgical practice with corresponding assignments that challenge students to practise essential research, writing, and communication skills. These assignments culminate in a final project: the presentation of students’ own devised bathtub performances. This syllabus, aiming toward a restorative pedagogy, imagines a future in-person classroom where students can collectively explore the relationship between public and private through bathtubs as a microcosm for the complexity of human experience.","PeriodicalId":212884,"journal":{"name":"The Syllabus is the Thing: Materialities of the Performance Studies Classroom","volume":"136 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134175276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This piece charts the creation of a gallery within an ethnic studies unit, a syllabus in conjunction with said space, and a student-artist group exhibition titled Objects Who Hold/Objects Who Let Go. The exhibition asks one to consider how we learn to withhold and let go of the memories that bridge gaps between permanence and ephemerality. Curated in community by the artists themselves, the show drives the audience to embrace this tension of holding on and letting go as one intentionally engages with experimental art that pushes the boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality across expressions of loss and mourning.
{"title":"Collective Curation across Difference: Performing Live with Race, Gender, and Sexuality","authors":"Sandra Ruiz","doi":"10.7202/1099887ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1099887ar","url":null,"abstract":"This piece charts the creation of a gallery within an ethnic studies unit, a syllabus in conjunction with said space, and a student-artist group exhibition titled Objects Who Hold/Objects Who Let Go. The exhibition asks one to consider how we learn to withhold and let go of the memories that bridge gaps between permanence and ephemerality. Curated in community by the artists themselves, the show drives the audience to embrace this tension of holding on and letting go as one intentionally engages with experimental art that pushes the boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality across expressions of loss and mourning.","PeriodicalId":212884,"journal":{"name":"The Syllabus is the Thing: Materialities of the Performance Studies Classroom","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115911103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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