Module description
In this module, we will explore a range of performance works and theoretical texts that take up gender and its intersections as a central inquiry. Through exploring a theory of gender as performed rather than innate, we will look closely at how it is enabled and constrained by specific material conditions, particularly those that have also shaped the construction of race, disability, sexual norms, class formations and colonial subject positions. You will be encouraged to think about how intersectional experiences are represented and/or 'troubled' through theatre, live art, installation, photography, video work and in the performance of everyday life, and will develop modes of analysing how performance produces specific meanings and effects through both textual and non-verbal (visual, gestural, sonic and other) means. Indicative topics may include: decolonial feminisms; crip theory and sexuality; labour, domesticity and "women's work"; drag and theatricality; masculinity and nationhood.
Assessment details
Reader response forum (15%), 3000 word essay (85%)
Educational aims & objectives
- Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of a range of performance genres and practices concerned with gender and its intersections, with detailed attention to how performance produces specific meanings and effects
- Deploy 'performance' as a methodological framework in order to analyse how identifications are constructed, maintained and transformed
- Develop and investigate nuanced questions about the performance of intersectional experience, through written analysis and seminar-based discussion
Suggested reading list
Most of the readings for this module will be contained in a course pack available at the beginning of term. In addition, you will need to acquire the following texts. Please note that the editions listed below are indicative only. You may use any edition of these plays:
John Osborne, Look Back in Anger, Faber and Faber; reprint edition, 1978.
Caryl Churchill, Cloud 9, Nick Hern Books; New edition, 1989.
Suzan-Lori Parks, Venus, Theatre Communications Group Inc.; 1st edition, 1997.
Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues, Virago Press Ltd; New edition, 2001.