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Queer & Feminist Peformance (2023 + 2025, Mount Holyoke College)
“The queer, here, undoes; it disrupts; it challenges norms; it is always on the move.” -Natalie Loveless (p.61) from How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research Creation
What can performance teach us about queer and feminist modes of being in the world? How can performance theory elucidate and complicate gender constructions and binaries? How might we come to define specific pieces of dance and performance art as “feminist” or “queer?” In what ways does lived experience—both that of the author, as well as our own experiences as audiences—inform what we label as queer?
Designed for students with an invested interest in dance & performance and open to all, this course offers students a close look at varied acts of queer and feminist performance in the United States. Through the lens of these performance acts, we will explore concepts of gender construction, sexuality, mourning, refusal & failure, virtuosity, auto-ethnography, and potentiality. Taking a cue from Black feminist practice, we will turn to our own lives and experiences as the sites of knowledge production. Central to this course is its oscillation between modes of inquiry—including movement, writing, reading, self-reflection, and discussion—in order to invite co-mingling of multiple vantage points and productive frictions in our learning. Considerable attention will be given to exploring queer and feminist practice as modes for opening new possibilities in our research, refusal of the status quo, and embodied epistemologies. This course engages writing practices, close reading of texts, video, live performance, in-class discussions and activities, presentations to the class, and research.
Authors and artists to be discussed include Jose Muñoz, Audre Lorde, Judith Butler, Jack Halberstam, Clare Croft, Katy Pyle, Autumn Knight, Okwui Okpokwasili, Sara Ahmed, Ana Mendieta, Trajal Harrell, Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston Jones, Faye Driscoll, Morgan Bassichis, and Young Jean Lee, and more.
“The queer, here, undoes; it disrupts; it challenges norms; it is always on the move.” -Natalie Loveless (p.61) from How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research Creation
What can performance teach us about queer and feminist modes of being in the world? How can performance theory elucidate and complicate gender constructions and binaries? How might we come to define specific pieces of dance and performance art as “feminist” or “queer?” In what ways does lived experience—both that of the author, as well as our own experiences as audiences—inform what we label as queer?
Designed for students with an invested interest in dance & performance and open to all, this course offers students a close look at varied acts of queer and feminist performance in the United States. Through the lens of these performance acts, we will explore concepts of gender construction, sexuality, mourning, refusal & failure, virtuosity, auto-ethnography, and potentiality. Taking a cue from Black feminist practice, we will turn to our own lives and experiences as the sites of knowledge production. Central to this course is its oscillation between modes of inquiry—including movement, writing, reading, self-reflection, and discussion—in order to invite co-mingling of multiple vantage points and productive frictions in our learning. Considerable attention will be given to exploring queer and feminist practice as modes for opening new possibilities in our research, refusal of the status quo, and embodied epistemologies. This course engages writing practices, close reading of texts, video, live performance, in-class discussions and activities, presentations to the class, and research.
Authors and artists to be discussed include Jose Muñoz, Audre Lorde, Judith Butler, Jack Halberstam, Clare Croft, Katy Pyle, Autumn Knight, Okwui Okpokwasili, Sara Ahmed, Ana Mendieta, Trajal Harrell, Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston Jones, Faye Driscoll, Morgan Bassichis, and Young Jean Lee, and more.
Oscillating Viewpoints in Dance-Making: Dance Writing and Dramaturgy (2022, Mount Holyoke College)
What might dramaturgical activities include in the context of dance-making? What tensions exist between writing and embodiment, and how can we activate these tensions to reveal unseen aspects of dancing and performance? How do our relationships, our modes of attention and sensing, and our subjectivities shape how and what we co-create?
This course offers students an introduction to dramaturgical activities in relation to dance-making. In this upper-level seminar, students will learn about the various forms of dance dramaturgy, while honing critical skills such as writing, researching, and discussion. Taking a cue from dramaturg Katherine Profeta, we will oscillate between multiple vantage points—stepping in and out of roles such as that of researcher, questioner, witness, archivist, translator, outside eye, inside eye, in order to experience our fractal and subjective vantage points as researchers and makers. This course centers around the interplay between writing and dramaturgical practices—holding our varied embodied experiences in the forefront, we will destabilize the pervasive mind-body split that can sometimes appear in scholarly, critical, writerly approaches to understanding dance. A central through-line for this course will be attending to the tension between language and the ephemeral nature of dance, embodiment, and performance. Continually re-departing from a vantage point of “not-knowing,” we ask, how might dramaturgical practices be used to trouble some of the power assumptions historically embedded in dance-making, and instead help us explore new possibilities for collaboration, meaning-making, and kinship?
Throughout this course, we will be engaged in studio visits, writing practices, in-class movement and witnessing experiments, reading, discussions, research, and attending live performance. Considerable attention will be given to how writing and dramaturgical practices can be sites of care. This course is designed for students who have a dedicated, ongoing dance, movement, performance, and/or making practice.
What might dramaturgical activities include in the context of dance-making? What tensions exist between writing and embodiment, and how can we activate these tensions to reveal unseen aspects of dancing and performance? How do our relationships, our modes of attention and sensing, and our subjectivities shape how and what we co-create?
This course offers students an introduction to dramaturgical activities in relation to dance-making. In this upper-level seminar, students will learn about the various forms of dance dramaturgy, while honing critical skills such as writing, researching, and discussion. Taking a cue from dramaturg Katherine Profeta, we will oscillate between multiple vantage points—stepping in and out of roles such as that of researcher, questioner, witness, archivist, translator, outside eye, inside eye, in order to experience our fractal and subjective vantage points as researchers and makers. This course centers around the interplay between writing and dramaturgical practices—holding our varied embodied experiences in the forefront, we will destabilize the pervasive mind-body split that can sometimes appear in scholarly, critical, writerly approaches to understanding dance. A central through-line for this course will be attending to the tension between language and the ephemeral nature of dance, embodiment, and performance. Continually re-departing from a vantage point of “not-knowing,” we ask, how might dramaturgical practices be used to trouble some of the power assumptions historically embedded in dance-making, and instead help us explore new possibilities for collaboration, meaning-making, and kinship?
Throughout this course, we will be engaged in studio visits, writing practices, in-class movement and witnessing experiments, reading, discussions, research, and attending live performance. Considerable attention will be given to how writing and dramaturgical practices can be sites of care. This course is designed for students who have a dedicated, ongoing dance, movement, performance, and/or making practice.