Program of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1133
Tuesdays and Thursdays 3-4 pm
Sever 203
Sections to be arranged
Email: <rbernst@fas> Elena Marx <marx@fas>
Phone: 617.495.9634
This course examines gender in performance and gender as performance. In other words, we analyze the meanings produced through already-gendered bodies on stage and in audiences, as well as the construction of gender through performances on stage and in everyday life. In the first week, titled “Introductions to Performance Studies,” we gain familiarity and dexterity with basic concepts in the field. After this introduction, we dig into three units of study. Unit 1, “Performing Preconstructed Gender,” examines performances in which the body is assumed to be always already gendered and sexed. In these performances, individuals reveal, celebrate, and critique their gendered lives and sexed bodies. In Unit 2, “Constructing Gender through Performance,” we engage with three major theorists—Erving Goffman, Judith Butler, and Laura Mulvey—each of whom offers a different account of how performance constructs gender norms and makes gender real. We apply the three theories in case studies of mainstream performances, including weddings, athletics, Playboy broadcast television, and play. We end the course with Unit 3, “Reconstructing and Deconstructing Gender through Performance,” in which we examine feminist, queer, anti-racist, and post-colonial uses of performance to re-invent gender. We encounter visionary writers and performers who believe that performance can—and will, and must—change the gendered and raced world.
Required Texts
Books (all on reserve at Lamont; all except the Sourcebook for
sale at the Coop):
● Robin Bernstein, ed., Cast Out:
Queer Lives in Theater
● Henry Bial, ed., The Performance
Studies Reader (Second Edition)
● Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues
● Erving Goffman, The Presentation
of Self in Everyday Life
● David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly
● Marsha Norman, ’night, Mother
● Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls
Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf
● Sourcebook (“SB”)
Films and
television programs (all on reserve
at Lamont)
● Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst Is
Your Waffen
●
● The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui
Odyssey
● Murderball
● My Queer Body
● Playboy's
Penthouse, Playboy After Dark, and The Girls Next Door
● The Search for Signs of Intelligent
Life in the Universe
● The Vagina Monologues
● Venus Boyz
● We Just Telling Stories
● The Yes Men
Live Performances
All students are required to attend the
following live performances:
● A performance and lecture by the Five Lesbian Brothers (
● Oedipus at
● Harvard Men’s Basketball game (Harvard v. Mercer) on
Friday, November 16, 7 pm (each
student in the class will receive a free
ticket to this game)
If you miss the
play or the basketball game, you must use your own resources to attend the same
play or a different Harvard men’s basketball game on another evening. Exceptions will apply to students who cannot
attend an event on the given night due to a documented, University-recognized
conflict. Such students will receive
free tickets to, and be required to attend, the play or a parallel game on a
different night. Please speak to you TF
as soon as possible if you foresee a conflict.
If you miss the Five Lesbian Brothers event at Harvard, you will need to
make a special arrangement with your TF to make up the work.
Web
Resources
The syllabus frequently
requires you to view a video clip online or to peruse a specific website. The
instruction to “peruse” means, first, that you should spend a significant
amount of time exploring the website’s various levels (some of these websites
are extensive, so it is not possible or desirable to read every page on the
site). Second, you should think
critically about the ways in which the individual or group chooses to
self-represent on the site. How do the
various individuals perform their identities on their websites?
Useful Information
Course Requirements and Grading:
Attendance (sections
and lectures), productive participation,
active listening, punctuality, respectful class
citizenship 25%
of final grade
Lecture Quiz (2
quizzes given; lower score dropped) 5%
of final grade
Section Quizzes
(3 quizzes given; lowest score dropped) 10%
of final grade
Performance
Analysis Exercise (3-5 pages, due Friday, Oct. 5) 10% of final
grade
Performance
Theory Exercise (5-7 pages, due Friday, Nov. 10) 15% of final grade
Attendance at
Queer Theatre panel (Monday, October 15) 5%
of final grade
Response to
Harvard men’s basketball game (1 page, due Nov. 19) 5% of final grade
Final Exam OR
Final Paper 25% of
final grade
Students will take collective responsibility for the success of
every discussion. This responsibility
involves three components. First, you
are required to arrive in class having read and thought about all the reading.
In other words, merely gulping down the reading is inadequate. You should come to class having chewed and
digested the material thoroughly. You are
expected to prepare your own thoughts, opinions, and questions before every
class. Second, you must listen actively
to your classmates. Your contributions
to our discussion should productively engage with your colleagues’ ideas. Third, you must express your thoughts in a
respectful manner that advances our conversation. Practices that disrespect your colleagues
(for example, interrupting, hogging the floor, launching personal attacks, or
answering cell phones) will hinder conversation; such practices, therefore, are
unacceptable.
Students must arrive on time for lectures and sections. Lectures start promptly at 3:07 pm.
All books (including the Sourcebook) and all films are on reserve
at Lamont Library. The Sourcebook is
also available in the WGS office (ground floor of Boylston Hall) and in the
Women’s Center.
Some of the required readings and viewings include nudity,
profanity, and/or explicit sexual content.
If you do not wish to engage with such materials, you should not enroll
in this course.
Each student will choose between writing a final paper and taking
a final exam. Most students will take
the exam. You should pursue the paper
option only if you are burning to work on a specific, relevant project. If you wish to write a paper in lieu of
taking the exam, you must submit a proposal to your TF by Thursday, November
15. If your TF approves your proposal,
your paper will be due the same day and time that the rest of the class takes
the exam. If your TF declines your
proposal, you must take the exam. You
may submit a paper proposal and later change your mind and take the exam
instead (even a last-minute decision to take the exam is fine).
All papers are due in the WGS office on the ground floor of
Boylston Hall by 3 pm of the due date. Late
papers will be penalized one third of a letter grade for each day overdue. Failure to complete any assignment can lower
your grade in excess of the stated percentage.
Attendance at the Queer Theatre Panel is graded full credit/no
credit.
Graduate students who take this course will receive different
writing assignments and additional reading assignments. Grad students will also attend lunchtime or
dinnertime meetings in which we will discuss the additional reading. Each graduate student must write a paper
rather than take the final exam.
Introductions
to Performance Studies
Tuesday,
September 18. What is performance? What
are some models for thinking about gender and performance?
● View in class: http://www.epica-awards.org/assets/epica/2005/finalists/film/flv/04005.htm
● View in class: excerpt from Venus
Boyz (directed by Gabriel Baur, 2004)
Thursday,
September 20. What is performance studies?
How does it relate to gender and sexuality studies? (Note: you
should read the following brief selections with the goal of gaining an overall sense
of what performance studies is. Try to
absorb these overlapping introductions and arrive in class ready to synthesize,
with your colleagues, definitions of performance and performance studies. It is not necessary to compare or contrast
the individual essays. For today, don’t
try to remember which author makes which point; just read for the overarching
ideas.)
● Read
pamphlet, “A Student’s Guide to Performance Studies” (available in the WGS
Office, Ground Floor of Boylston Hall)
● Read
Richard Schechner, “What is Performance Studies Anyway?” in Peggy Phelan and
● Read
Laurence Senelick, excerpt from “Introduction,” in Senelick, Gender in Performance: The Presentation of
Difference in the Performing Arts (Hanover, NH and London: University Press
of New England, 1992), pp. ix-xv (SB)
● Read
Marvin Carlson, “What is Performance?” in Bial, The Performance Studies Reader (hereafter “Bial”), pp. 70-75
● Read
Richard Schechner, “Foreword: Fundamentals of Performance Studies,” in Nathan
Stucky and Cynthia Wimmer, eds., Teaching
Performance Studies (
● Recommended: view interviews with
Richard Schechner and Barbara Kirschenblatt Gimblett, “What is Performance
Studies?,” at http://www.hemi.nyu.edu/eng/archive/video.shtml
Unit 1:
Performing Preconstructed
Gender
Tuesday,
September 25. Gender in Performance
● Read Ntozake Shange, For Colored
Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf
● Read excerpt from Keith
Antar Mason, for black boys who have
considered homicide when the streets are too much, in Harry J. Elam and
Robert Alexander, eds., Colored
Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Plays (NY:
Plume, 1996), pp. 177-187 (SB)
● Recommended: read
Keith Antar Mason, “Where do I want my theatre performed,” Left Curve Issue 21
(31 Dec. 1997), p. 90 (online at http://www.leftcurve.org/LC21WebPages/keithmason.html)
● Recommended: View For Colored
Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf (directed by Oz Scott, with ensemble including
Ntozake Shange and Alfre Woodward, 1982)
Thursday,
September 27: Gender in Performance
● Read Tim Miller, Introduction to My
Queer Body in Miller, Body Blows (
● Read Tim Miller, “The NEA Four Case,” in Miller, 1001 Beds: Performances, Essays, and Travels (
● Read Tim Miller, “The Battle of Chattanooga” in Robin Bernstein, ed., Cast Out: Queer Lives in Theater (
● View Tim Miller, My Queer Body
● Peruse
http://hometown.aol.com/millertale/timmiller.html
● Recommended: View Tongues
Untied (directed by Marlon Riggs, 1996)
● Recommended: Read Rob Baum,
“From Elks to Aliyah,” in Bernstein, pp. 195-204
Tuesday,
October 2. I’m Ready for My Close-Up: Sexed Bodies in Performance
● Read Eve Ensler, The Vagina
Monologues
● View The Vagina Monologues (written
and directed by Eve Ensler, 2002)
● Read Esther Morris Leidolf, “An Additional Monologue,” in Sojourner March 2001 (online at http://mrkhorg.homestead.com/files/ORG/AdditionalMonologue.htm)
● Peruse
http://www.vday.org/main.html
● Recommended: Read Kate Bornstein and Barbara Carrellas, “Queer
Theater, Musicals to Masturbation: A Conversation with Too Tall Blondes,” in Bernstein,
pp. 103-111
Unit
2:
Constructing
Gender Through Performance
In this Unit,
we engage with three major theoretical approaches to gender and
performance. Erving Goffman, Judith
Butler, and Laura Mulvey argue in different ways that gender is constructed—that
is, made real—through performance. We intersperse
our readings of these theorists with readings and viewings that provide
opportunities for us to deepen and challenge our engagement with the theorists. We particularly focus on quotidian, normative
performances of gender—that is, feminine women and masculine men engaged in
ordinary activities and social rituals such as playing sports, getting married,
and watching television.
Thursday,
October 4. Gender as a Performance in
Everyday Life
● Read
Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959).
“Introduction,” pp. 1-16;
● Read
Robin D.G. Kelley, “Confessions of a Nice Negro, or Why I Shaved My Head,” in
Don Belton, ed., Speak My Name: Black Men
on Masculinity and the American Dream (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), pp.
12-22 (SB)
Friday,
October 5: PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS EXERCISE DUE to WGS office by 3 pm
Tuesday, October 9. Gender as a “stylized repetition
of acts”
● Read Judith Butler, “Performative Acts
and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” in Bial,
pp. 187-197. If you have already read
this essay and feel confident that you understand it, you may substitute
● Read Judith Halberstam, “Mackdaddy,
Superfly, Rapper: Gender, Race, and Masculinity in the Drag King Scene,” in Social
Text 52/53, nos 3 and 4 (Fall/Winter 1997), pp. 105-131 (Access online
through JSTOR)
● Read
MilDréd Diyaa Gerestant, “Exposures of a Multispirited, Haitian-American,
Gender-Harmonizing WoMan” in Bernstein, pp. 44-50
● View Venus Boyz (dir. Gabriel Baur, 2004)
● Assignment
for Performance Theory Exercise distributed in class
Monday,
October 9: RECOMMENDED EVENT: Carolee
Schneemann lecture, “DiSRUPTiVE CoNSCioUSNESS,” Fong Auditorium, Boylston Hall,
4 pm
Please note:
from October 11 through October 18, we temporarily interrupt our focus on three
theorists—Goffman,
Thursday,
October 11. Queering Gender
● Sue-Ellen Case, “Toward a Butch-Femme
Aesthetic,” in Lynda Hart, ed., Making a
Spectacle: Feminist Essays on Contemporary Women’s Theatre (Ann Arbor, MI:
The University of Michigan Press, 1989), pp. 282-299 (SB)
● Read
Peggy Shaw, “How I Learned Theatre,” in Bernstein, pp. 25-29
● Read
Lisa Kron, “A Straight Line,” in Bernstein, pp. 51-55
● Peruse
http://www.wowcafe.org/
● View
clips of Split Britches and Spiderwoman performances at http://www.dyketv.org/archive/clips/a_080_splitbritches.html,
http://www.dyketv.org/archive/clips/a_141_wow.html,and
http://www.dyketv.org/archive/clips/a_007_miguel.html
● Peruse http://www.splitbritches.com/index.html
(note that the “showreels” section includes video clips)
Monday,
October 15. REQUIRED EVENT: “Legends
in Queer Performance: Can Theater Change the World?” A roundtable discussion
with Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver, founding members of Split Britches; Moe
Angelos, Karen “Mal” Malme, Linda Monchik, Brigid O’Connor, and Vanessa Soto,
The Five Lesbian Brothers; and director Kate Caffery and Assistant Director
Adam Sussman. Fong Auditorium, Boylston
Hall, 5 pm.
Tuesday,
October 16. Camp
● Read Susan Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp,”
in Sontag, Against Interpretation
(New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1961), pp. 275-292 (SB)
● Read
Kate Davy, “Fe/male Impersonation: The Discourse of Camp,” in Janelle G.
Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach, eds., Critical
Theory and Performance (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press,
1992), pp. 231-247 (SB)
Wednesday,
October 17. RECOMMENDED Event: The Veiled Monologues, 7:30 pm, and/or
Post-Performance “Talkback” featuring panel with Robin Bernstein, Jocelyne Cesari,
Afsaneh Najmabadi, and Adelheid Roosen, 9:15 pm, Zero Arrow Theatre. For tickets to The Veiled Monologues, go to http://www.amrep.org/veiled/. The Talkback is FREE and open to all,
including people who did not attend the play.
Thursday,
October 18. Revisiting Preconstructed Gender: The Veiled Monologues
● Reading
TBA
● Adelheid
Roosen and actors from The Veiled
Monologues speak in class
Tuesday,
October 23. We Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming! Naturalistic Performances of Gender: Feminine
Women
● Read
Chrys Ingraham, White Weddings: Romancing
Heterosexuality in Popular Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1999).
pp. 2-23 and 78-121 (SB)
● Recommended: Read Louise Carolin with
Catherine Bewley, “Girl Talk: Femmes in Discussion,” in Sally R. Munt, ed., Butch/Femme: Inside Lesbian Gender
(London: Cassell, 1998), pp.109-121 (SB)
● Recommended: Read Bree Coven, “There’s a
Place for Us . . . Somewhere,” in Bernstein, pp. 140-149
● Recommended: Read Victor Turner,
“Liminality and Communitas,” in Bial, pp, 89-97
Thursday, October 25. Naturalistic Performances of
Gender: Masculine Men (PLUS: Performance and Physical Space)
● View The Yes Men (directed by Dan Ollman, Sarah Price, and Chris Smith,
2003)
● Peruse http://www.theyesmen.org/
● Read
John Preston, “The Theatre of Sexual Initiation,” in Laurence Senelick, ed., Gender in Performance: The Presentation of
Difference in the Performing Arts (Hanover, NH: University Press of New
England, 1992), pp. 324-335 (SB)
● Read Kevin Winkler, “The Divine Mr. K:
Reclaiming My ‘Unruly’ Past with Bette Midler and the Baths,” in Bernstein, pp.
60-76
● Read
Patricia Marx, “Do I Look Fat?” New Yorker, 23 April 2007, Vol. 83, Issue 9, pp. 27-28 (SB or access online
through Hollis)
Thursday,
October 25: Required Theatre Attendance: Oedipus
at Palm Springs, Calderwood Pavilion,
● Peruse
http://thetheateroffensive.org/
Tuesday,
October 30. Gender as a Mode of Looking and Being Looked At
● Read
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (London:
Macmillan, 1989), pp. 14-26 (SB)
● Read
David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly
● Recommended: Read Michael R. Schiavi,
“Professional Spectatorship’s Queer Stages,” in Bernstein, pp. 124-139
Thursday,
November 1. Televisual Spectatorship
● Read
John Ellis, “Broadcast TV as Sound and Image” in
Ellis, Visible Fictions: Cinema,
Television, Video (New York, NY: Routledge, 1992), pp. 127-144 (SB)
● View
selected episodes from Playboy's Penthouse
(Broadcast television
series), 1959-1960; Playboy After Dark
(Broadcast television
series), 1968-1970; and The Girls Next
Door, (E! Network series), 2005
Tuesday, November
6. Play and Teams
● Read
Erving Goffman, Chapter 2, “Teams,” in The
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, pp. 77-105
● Read
all of Part IV in Bial (introduction plus essays by Johan Huizinga, Gregory
Bateson, Brian Sutton-Smith, Allan Kaprow, and Barry Jean Ancelet, pp. 135-164)
● Read
Katherine Liebe-Levinson, “Performing Spectators: The Pleasure of Mimetic
Jeopardy,” in Strip Show: Performances of
Gender and Desire (
Thursday,
November 8. Athletics
● Read
“Sport as Performance: Setting the Stage” and “Sport as Epiphanic Marker: A
Case Study of Superbowl XXVI” from Robert E. Rinehart, Players All: Performances in Contemporary Sport (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 1-20, 69-83 (SB)
● Read
Judith
● View
Murderball (directed by Henry Alex
Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro, 2005)
Friday,
November 9: PERFORMANCE THEORY EXERCISE DUE to WGS office by 3 pm
Unit 3:
Reconstructing and
Deconstructing Gender Through Performance
Tuesday, November
13. Feminism and Realism
● Read
Jill Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as
Critic (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Research Press, 1988).
● Read
Marsha Norman, ’night, Mother
● Instructions
for final paper option distributed in class
Thursday, November
15. Brecht’s Challenges to Realism and Expressionism
● Read
Bertolt Brecht, “The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre,” “The Literalization
of the Theatre,” “Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction,” and “A
Short Organum for the Theatre,” in Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans.
by John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), pp. 33-47, 69-77, 179-205 (SB)
● Read
Bertolt Brecht, “A Dialogue About Acting,” in Bial, pp. 219-222
● Proposals for final paper due for all
students who wish to pursue this option
Friday,
November 16. Required Event: Harvard v.
Mercer men’s basketball game. 7 pm, Lavietes Pavilion.
Monday, November 19. RESPONSE TO BASKETBALL GAME DUE
to WGS office by 3 pm
Tuesday,
November 20. “Gender” and other Quotations
● View
Thursday, November 22. THANKSGIVING. NO CLASS.
Tuesday, November 27. Identification
● Read Anna Deavere Smith, Fires in the Mirror (NY: Anchor Books,
1993). “Introduction,” “Background Information,” and “Chronology,” pp.
xxiii-liii (SB)
● Read Anna Deavere Smith, “The Word
Becomes You: An Interview by Carol Martin.” In A Source Book of Feminist Theatre and Performance, ed. Carol Martin
(New York: Routledge, 1996), pp.185-204 (SB)
● View Anna Deavere Smith, Fires in the Mirror
Thursday, November 29. Disidentification
● Read José Esteban Muñoz, “Sister Acts:
Ela Troyano and Carmelita Tropicana,” in Disidentifications:
Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 119-141 (SB)
● Read Alina Troyano, a.k.a. Carmelita
Tropicana, “Author’s Introduction” and “Performance Art Manifesto,” in I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performing Between
Cultures (
● View interview with José Esteban Muñoz, “What is Performance Studies?,”
at http://www.hemi.nyu.edu/eng/archive/video.shtml
● View
in class: Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst
Is Your Waffen (directed by Ela Troyano, starring Alina Troyano, 1994)
Tuesday,
December 4. Nation, Gender, Sexuality, Race, History
● Read
Caroline Vercoe, “Agency and Ambivalence: A Reading of Works by Coco Fusco,” in
Coco Fusco, The Bodies That Were Not Ours
and Other Writings (
● Read
Guillermo Gómez-Peña, “Colonial Dreams/Post-Colonial Nightmares,” in
Gómez-Peña, The
● Read
● Read
Guillermo Gómez-Peña,Gulturas-in-Extremis: Performing Against the Cultural
Backdrop of the Mainstream Bizarre,” in Bial, pp. 345-356
● Peruse
http://www.thing.net/~cocofusco/
● Peruse
http://www.pochanostra.com/#Scene_1
● Recommended: view interview with Diana
Taylor, “What is Performance Studies?,” online at http://www.hemi.nyu.edu/eng/archive/video.shtml
● View in class: The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey (video by Coco Fusco
and Paula Heredia, featuring performance by Coco Fusco and Guillermo
Gómez-Peña, 1993)
Tuesday, December 4. RECOMMENDED EVENT:
Judith Butler speaks at Harvard, sponsored by the Program of Studies of Women,
Gender, and Sexuality (time and location TBA)
Thursday, December
6. Can Performance Save Lives? A Case Study: Incarcerated Women
● Read
from Rena Fraden, Imagining Medea:
Rhodessa Jones and Theater for Incarcerated Women (
● Peruse
http://culturalodyssey.org/medea/
● View
in class: excerpts from We Just Telling
Stories (Lawrence Andrews, 2000)
Tuesday, December
11. Can Performance Save Lives? A Case
Study: AIDS Activism
● Read
Michael Kearns, “Heaven and Home,” in Bernstein, pp. 205-209
● Read
Catherine Saalfield and Ray Navarro, “Shocking the Pink: Race and Gender on the
ACT UP Frontlines,” in Inside/Out:
Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, ed. Diana Fuss (New York: Routledge, 1991),
pp. 341-369 (SB)
● Read
Doug Sadownick, “ACT UP Makes a Spectacle of AIDS,” in High Performance 13:1 (1990): 26-31 (SB).
● Peruse
http://www.actupny.org/
● Peruse
http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/
ages/GranFury/GFGllry.html (also in SB)
● Look
at Gran Fury bus ad at
http://www.ncac.org/timeline/1990.cfm
Thursday, December
13. Hope
● Read
Charles Ludlam, “Manifesto: Ridiculous Theatre, Scourge of Human Folly,” from Ridiculous Theatre: Scourge of Human Folly:
The Essays and Opinions of Charles Ludlam, Steven Samuels, ed. (New York:
Theatre Communications Group, 1992), pp. 157-158 (SB)
● Read
Jill Dolan, “Feeling the Potential of Elsewhere,” in Dolan, Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the
Theater (
● Peruse
http://www.lilytomlin.com/
● Peruse
http://www.feministspectator.blogspot.com/
● View
CNN video of Nikki Giovanni’s performance at the convocation after the Virginia
Tech massacre, April 2007 at http://youtube.com/watch?v=0cSuidxE8os
● View
in class: selections from The Search for
Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (directed by John Bailey, written
by Jane Wagner, starring Lily Tomlin, 1991)
Tuesday, December
18. Heroism
● Read
Cherríe L. Moraga, “And Frida Looks Back: The Art of Latina/o Queer Heroics,”
in Bernstein, pp. 79-90