Queer(ing) Performance

Catalog description

When is performance performative? What might it do? Using contemporary performance as a site of inquiry and analysis, this course will examine what it means to perform queerness. Considering queer as an identity, an approach, and an aesthetic, the class will explore how performances might question the assumptions and ideologies of social and cultural normativity. Attending to the realities and possibilities of live arts, the course material will tackle issues of some of the issues of intersectionality, representation, (dis)identification, and desire that emerge in the study of embodiment. Bringing scholarship (primarily from Dance Studies, Performance Studies, Cultural Studies, and Theater) into conversation with recent creative/art practices, the class will invite students to analyze, interrogate, imagine, and make their own interventions into contemporary performance cultures. Satisfies Gender and Sexuality major requirement. Satisfies Dance minor requirement. Satisfies Visual and Performing Arts requirement. Satisfies Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.