First-Year Writing Seminar: Staging (In)Justice: Aeschylus to Butterworth

Catalog description

From #blacklivesmatter to climate justice, the cries for “justice” cover our twitter feeds and news networks on a daily basis. But what exactly is “justice”? How are ideas of justice construed or understood across different periods, cultures, places, or individuals? Is justice for one injustice for another? Why depict these tensions on stage? “Staging (In)Justice: Aeschylus to Butterworth” traces the way justice is depicted in drama from Greek tragedy to the present day, with a special attention to the way live theater, which requires the bodies of actors to tell a story, both makes justice more immediate and the audience complicit in the justice or injustice presented—as well as complicit in the actions that follow. Beginning with Aeschylus’s The Oresteia, this course will cross time and place to look at plays such as Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, August Wilson’s Jitney, Sulayman Al-Bassam’s The Al-Hamlet Summit, and Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman, as well as a musical such as the Broadway revival of Oklahoma!. Are corrupt systems responsible for injustice? Do we champion some who search for justice and condemn others? Is justice always “fair”? What about revenge? As we focus on theater, this class will also consider how revivals of plays often resonate with contemporary experiences in ways non-dramatic literature cannot. Working on our writing to create clear, convincing arguments backed by textual evidence, this class will work our way through drama to reflect on our own responses—written and otherwise—to current-day cries for justice.