KS 340L

Performance Cultures

Performance often describes a specialized domain of aesthetic activity related to the performing arts: we know, for example, that actors, dancers, and musicians perform. But performance also illuminates a wide range of other cultural behaviors and activities: religious clerics “perform” ceremonies, business administrators conduct “performance evaluations,” legislation “acts” upon us as citizens, and as individuals we perform things like our gender, class, nationality, and ethnicity every day through small and often unconscious acts. This course takes a broad-spectrum approach to the performance concept in order to introduce students to performance as a key concept within culture and communication studies. Throughout the course, we will investigate what performance is, what performance does, and what it means to use performance as a paradigm to analyze culture (“performance as”). We will explore such topics as role-play, ritual, performativity, performative utterances, and state pageantry. The course will be organized in three discrete units: Performance in Everyday Life, Gender and Performance, and Performance and Power. There will be a summative assignment at the end of each unit and a capstone final project.