Black Performance Theory.

Catalog description

Semester course; 3 lecture hours. 3 credits. Prerequisites: DANC 103 , DANC 104 and UNIV 200 . This course will focus on performance as apt method for analysis of notions/experiences of Blackness. Students will read scholarly texts which contend with the ubiquity of Black death and gratuitous violence alongside sonic, visual and written texts by significant cultural contributors — including works by Rihanna, Dapper Dan, Cardi B, Beyonce and Janet Mock — in order to examine and contend with expressions of complex personhood by people who exist under the constant threat of annihilation. The course focuses on embodied knowledge — that is, the harnessing of insight derived from lived experiences of hegemonic racial, gender, sexual and class subjection — and how such wisdom is transformed into strategies, tactics and tools that enable black people to acquire the human and material resources needed for survival. Crosslisted as: DANC 415 .