Learning Outcomes:
- Students will be conversant in queer theories and queer methods of critique, as well as other forms of critical theory, such as feminism, critical race, and transgender theory
- Students will be conversant with a wide variety of queer performance practices
- Students will have developed a vocabulary to discuss various forms of identity, and their intersectionality
- Students will have developed their academic writing skills
Indicative Module Content:
Class Schedule:
(Subject to change)
Class 1: Introduction To Module: What is Queer Theatre and Performance?
Class 2: Queer Theories, Politics, and Performances
Required Reading:
Muñoz, José Esteban. "Introduction: Performing Disidentifications." Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999, pp. 1-34.
Annamarie Jagose, “Queer.” Queer Theory: An Introduction. New York: New York University Press, 1996, pp. 72-100.
Recommended: E. Patrick Johnson, “Queer Theory.” The Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies, edited by Tracy C. Davis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008, pp. 166-81.
Class 3: Gender’s a Drag
Required Reading:
Gilbert, Sky. “Drag Queens on Trial: A Courtroom Melodrama,” Painted, Tainted, Sainted: Four Plays. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 1996.
Butler, Judith. "Gender Imitation and Insubordination." The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader Edited by Henry Abelove, et. al. Routledge, New York, 1993, pp. 307-20.
Recommended: Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal. Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), pp. 519-531.
Dolan, Jill. "Practicing Cultural Disruptions: Gay and Lesbian Representation and Sexuality." Critical Theory and Performance. Edited by Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach. Ann Arbor: The U. of Michigan Press, 1992, pp. 263-75.
Class 4: Reclaiming Lost Herstories
Required Reading:
Emma Donoghue, I Know My Own Heart
Maria Kurdi, “Lesbian Versions of the Female Biography Play: Emma Donoghue’s I Know My Own Heart and Ladies and Gentlemen.” Deviant Acts: Essays on Queer Performance, edited by David Cregan. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2009, pp. 37-54.
Recommended: Emma Donoghue, “A Tale of Two Annies.” Butch/Femme: Inside Lesbian Gender. Edited by Sally Munt, London: Cassell, 1998.
Week 5: Performing Community: Race, Class, and Gender
Required: Livingston, Jenny. Paris is Burning 78 Mins. (Available on Netflix and
hooks, bell. "Is Paris Burning?" Black Looks: Race and Representation, South End Press, 1992, pp. 145-156.
Butler, Judith. "Gender Is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion." Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex", Routledge, 1993, pp. 121-140.
Class 6: Performing “Butch” and “Femme”
Required: Bourne, Bette, et al. "Belle Reprieve." Gay and Lesbian Plays Today. Ed. Terry Helbing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993. 2-38.
Jill Dolan, “‘Lesbian’ Subjectivity in Realism: Dragging at the Margins of Structure and Ideology” Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. Ed. Sue-Ellen Case. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
Recommended: Halberstam, Judith. "An Introduction to Female Masculinity." Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. 1-43. Excerpts
Week 7: Sickness and Healing
Required: Watkins, Neil. The Year of Magical Wanking
Cormac O'Brien (2013) 'Performing POZ: Irish Theatre, HIV Stigma, and 'Post-AIDS' Identities'. Irish University Review, 43 (1):74-85
Class 8: Marriage, Coupling and Politics
Required: READ/LISTEN: Amy Conroy I Heart Alice Heart I (Sound recording link posted to Blackboard)
Conroy, Amy. I Heart Alice Heart I. In This is just this. It isn't real. It's money: The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Irish Plays, edited by Thomas Conway. London: Oberon Books, 2012. 185-219.
Anne Mullhall, Republic of Love (Available online at https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/)
Class 9: Transgenders
Required: McKevitt, Una. “The Big Deal.” In This is just this. It isn't real. It's money: The Oberon anthology of contemporary Irish Plays, edited by Thomas Conway. London: Oberon Books, 2012. pp. 221-249.
Namaste, Viviane. Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People (University of Chicago Press, 2000).
Recommended: Stone, Sandy. “The Empire Strikes Back: A Postranssexual Manifesto.” The Transgender Studies Reader, eds. Susan Stryker, et.al. Routledge, London, 2006.
Class 10: Transgenders
Required: Drake, Sunny. “No Strings (Attached).” Q2Q: Queer Canadian Performance Texts. Edited by Peter Dickinson, et. al. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2018.
Cromwell, Jason. “Queering the Binaries: Transsituated Identities, Bodies, and Sexualities.” The Transgender Studies Reader, eds. Susan Stryker, et.al. Routledge, London, 2006, pp. 509-20.
Recommended: Green, Jamison. “Look! No, Don’t!: The Visibility Dilema for Transexual Men.” The Transgender Studies Reader, eds. Susan Stryker, et.al. Routledge, London, 2006, pp. 499-508.
Class 11: Indigenous Epistemologies
Required: Fobister, Waawaate. “Agokwe.” In Two-spirit Acts: Queer Indigenous Performances. Ed. Jean O’Hara. Toronto: Playwright Canada Press, 2013.
Carter, Jill. "Negotiating Tensions Betwixt Presence and Absence Amidst a Big Sadness: Cultural Reclamation, Reinvention, and Costume Design." Canadian Theatre Review, vol. 152, no. 1, 2012, pp. 5-12.
Recommended: Fobister, Waawaate. "Theatre that is Not just DEH-BIN-NOCK." Canadian Theatre Review, vol. 150, no. 1, 2012, pp. 94-96.
Class 12: TBA