Courses

One of the central goals of the Institute is to create new knowledge and to inform new ways of thinking about knowledge. The Institute hosts team-taught seminars that combine the face-to-face quality of traditional classrooms with online collaboration, enabling students throughout the Americas to communicate and work together online. The areas of research developed by the Institute for these courses follow a chronological and thematic sequence, exploring shared topics in the historical trajectory of the Americas in the last five centuries: Conquest, Colonialism, Nationalism and Globalization. The Institute has offered related courses in Trauma, Memory and Performance; Performance and Activism; Latin American Theater and Performance; Performance and/of Indigeneity; and Theories of Spectatorship, among others. We also offer an annual summer course in Lima, taught by major scholars in the field, and co-taught by Peru’s foremost theatre collective, Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, which is open to students from member universities. Students can take the course for credit as an Independent Study at their home institution.

Spring 2012: Embodiment

This course will consider a number of topics related to embodiment and performance. Has the rise of digital technologies changed the ways in which we think of the body and presence? Has embodiment come to complicate or disrupt paradigms of race, class, gender and sexuality? Focusing on embodiment in virtual and actual spaces, we will explore such issues as simulation, affect, trauma, memory, re-performance, activism, and resistance.

Spring 2012: Memory, Trauma, and Performance

This course explores the interconnections between trauma, memory, and performance in Latin America. Starting in the 1960s, we focus on events throughout the Americas—Mexico 1968, Argentina’s ‘Dirty War,’ Chile under Pinochet, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, and other sites in which criminal politics have disappeared citizens and traumatized populations. Does each context have its own unique structure and idiom, or can we think about individual and collective trauma through a translocal, cosmopolitan lens? Topics include: the performance of state power and state sponsored terror; the individual and collective nature of trauma; the study of embodied practices such as testimony and witnessing; the construction of archives of testimony; testimony, its use in literature, museums, and pedagogy, its dramatizations by others, its archivization; the social role of sites of memory (ESMA, Villa Grimaldi etc.); performances of protest and resistance.

Spring 2012: Performance and Revolution

The purpose of this class is to explore a number of topics in Performance and Revolution. It won't be exhaustive by any means, but we'll touch on a number of questions via articles, theoretical and historical texts, and lectures, with the goal of understanding revolution and the role of performance within it, with a special focus on what's going on right now in New York City.

Spring 2012: Beautiful Trouble

Course description is forthcoming.

Summer 2011: Art and Resistance

This course explores the many ways in which artists and activists use art (performance, mural paintings, grati, writing, music) to make a social intervention in the Americas. We begin the course by examining several theories about art and activism (from Plato and Aristotle to Brecht, Boal, Buenaventura, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Foucault among others) and then focus on issues of agency, space, event, and audience in relation to major political movements (revolution, dictatorship, democracy, globalization, and human rights) as seen in the work of major practitioners. Jesusa Rodriguez will lead an intensive one-week performance workshop as part of the course. Performances, video screenings, guest lectures, and visits to FOMMA, Chiapas Media Project, a Zapatista community and other activist projects will provide an additional dimension to the questions raised by the theoretical readings and discussions. Students are encouraged to develop their own sites of investigation and present their work as a final presentation and paper.

Spring 2011: Theatre and Performance in Latin America from 1960's to the present

This course examines the use of theatre and performance - by the State, by oppositional groups, and by theatre and performance practitioners - to solidify or challenge structures of power. The course looks at specific examples of how theatre and public spectacles have been used since the 1960s to control or contest the political stage. Starting with the climactic moment of the Cuban revolution, we examine how Latin American playwrights (Enrique Buenaventura, José Triana, Augusto Boal) and collective theatre groups (Yuyachkani, T.E.C.) struggled to transform theatre from an instrument of colonial oppression into an oppositional, at times revolutionary, "theatre of the oppressed." We then look at the military dictatorships of the 1970s-80s, during which Latin American playwrights, performers, and political actors responded to political violence (Griselda Gambaro, Eduardo Pavlovsky). In the 1980s and 90s the convergence of performance and politics takes many forms - from issues of gender, sexuality and race, to neo-colonialism and globalism - as visible in the practices of playwrights and solo performance artists (Maris Bustamante, Diana Raznovich, Jesusa Rodriguez, Denise Stoklos, Astrid Hadad, Petrona de la Cruz Cruz).

Spring 2011: Theories of Spectatorship

This course explores the many ways in which theorists and theatre practitioners have thought about the ways in which staged action (whether in film, theatre, or politics) pacifies, activates, interpolates, and manipulates viewers. We will explore concepts such as identification, voyeurism, narcissism, bearing witness, percepticide, spect-actor, and others.

Summer 2010: Art and Resistance

Spring 2010: Stages of Conflict: Latin American Theatre 16th-21th Centuries

Latin American theatre and performance, this course suggests, have always been caught up with the region’s turbulent political history. Although the plays and performance practices we will explore make strong claims at aesthetic distinction, this is not their primary reason for being. These works are in constant dialogue with the events shaping them. We will trace the ‘stages of conflict’ reflected in this theatre by moving from the 16th to the 21st century. Readings will include plays by many of Latin America’s major playwrights. Online resources include “Stages of Conflict” website and Holy Terrors.

Spring 2010: Trauma, Terror and Performance

This course explores the interconnections between trauma, terror, memory, and performance through three major 20^th and 21^st c. events – the Holocaust, Argentina’s ‘Dirty War,’ and the United States’s post 9/11 “war on terror ” – and the theoretical questions they raise. Do they each have their own unique structure and idiom, or can we think about individual and collective trauma through a trans-local, cosmopolitan lens? Topics include: the performance of state power and state sponsored terror; the individual and collective nature of trauma; the effects of gender, race and power on trauma and memory; embodied practices such as testimony and witnessing, their use in literature, museums, pedagogy, and performance, and their archivization; the relation of torture and truth; the social role of sites of memory and memorialization (Auschwitz, Club Atlético, Ground Zero, Guantanamo, etc.); theaters of justice such as trials, tribunals and truth commissions; performances of protest and resistance.

Summer 2009: Staging Citizenship, Performing Rights in Bogotá, Colombia

Offered in conjunction with the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, this course explores the relation of culture and rights in the Americas, with emphasis on contemporary Bogotá, Colombia.The course is organized in three segments: a week in New York City, where we introduce key readings and topics on performance, citizenship and cultural rights, especially in relation to Colombia; a 4-day mini course focused on performance and cultural rights in the city of Bogotá, Colombia, with an emphasis on struggles around public space; and the 10-day Hemispheric Institute Encuentro in Bogotá, focused on citizenship and cultural rights across the Americas. Please see http://www.hemisphericinstitute.org/eng/encuentro/colombia_overview.html for more detailed information on the Encuentro.

Spring 2009: Memory, Trauma, and Performance

This course explores the interconnections between trauma, memory, and performance in Latin America. Starting in the 1960s, we focus on events throughout the Americas—Mexico 1968, Argentina’s ‘Dirty War,’ Chile under Pinochet, Nicaragua, and other sites in which criminal politics have disappeared citizens and traumatized populations. Does each context have its own unique structure and idiom, or can we think about individual and collective trauma through a translocal, cosmopolitan lens? Topics include: the performance of state power and state sponsored terror; the individual and collective nature of trauma; the study of embodied practices such as testimony and witnessing; the construction of archives of testimony; testimony, its use in literature, museums, and pedagogy, its dramatizations by others, its archivization; the social role of sites of memory (ESMA, Villa Grimaldi etc.); performances of protest and resistance.

Fall 2008: Performance and Politics Elections

This course explores the many ways in which artists and activists and other social actors use performance to make a social intervention. We begin the course examining several theories about performance and politics (Brecht, Boal, Foucault, Ngugi wa Thiong'o among others) and then focus on issues of agency, space, event, and audience both online and off. Special attention will be paid to the role of performance in the 2008 presidential elections. Video screenings and guest lectures will provide an additional dimension for the course. Students are encouraged to develop their own sites of investigation and present their work as a final presentation and paper.

Summer 2008: Theatre/Politics/Memory:  Performance & Cultural Politics in Peru

Peru has witnessed unprecedented change in the past generation, beginning the period of brutal civil violence suffered by the country from 1980 to 2000. Together with Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, we will focus on the social divisions that have so long defined Peruvian culture, and consider the politics of healing through the careful understanding and crossing of such boundaries. We take the notion of “borders” as a frame to organize our readings, visits, and other activities: how has social and discourse in Peru understood the borders that divide its people by gender, race, or class? How has Peruvian national and state discourse rendered those divisions and/or their potential integration? We will explore these issues through a range of related activities: an intensive workshop with Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, guest lectures with leading scholars and artists, site visits to museums and other sites, and a series of readings and film screenings, all outlined in the schedule.