English 90rq. Bold Bodies: Race in Feminist & Queer Performance

Instructor: Maria de Simone
Tuesday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location:  Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students.
Course Site

This course offers feminist/queer, minoritarian, and comparative perspectives to the study of race in performance. We will define minoritarian aesthetics in both content and style, underscoring the practices that remake the world from minor voices. This course understands theatre and performance as crucial for personal and community expression, political activism, and survival.

We will explore a variety of representation and performance techniques from the last sixty years—theatre and drama, modern dance, performance art, fashion, film, and music—from geographical areas including but not limited to the United States. Performances and theories will spur discussions on topics such as body politics and sexualities, representation and spectatorship, understandings of race, and uses/limitations of performance in feminist/queer activism. This course will broaden students’ perspectives on what performance can do to advance racial and social justice through the subversive voices of minoritarian subjects.

This course satisfies the “1900-2000 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.