Cluster 1

Performance: Object / Body / Place

Structured, repetitive enactments do not simply reflect existing cultural patterns but actively constitute experiences of space, time and personhood. We consider the entire spectrum of performance genres, including ritual, oral poetics, jural processes, political protests, classical theater, cross-dressing, drag, hip-hop and contemporary performance art. Students have opportunities to apply theoretical insights to ethnographic and community-oriented projects, theatrical workshops, and to engage in creative work in directing, theater, dance and multimedia installations. 

Cluster 1 Core courses

  • Contemporary Theatre in Production: (THA 103, by Ryan Mckittrick)
  • Myth and Ritual (ANTH 105a)
  • African Art and Aesthetics (ANTH 112a)
  • Verbal Art and Cultural Performance (ANTH 114b)
  • Suzuki (THA 130a)
  • Theatre/Theory: Investigating Performance (ENG 151b)
  • Making Sex, Performing Gender (ENG 181a)
  • The Arts of Building Peace: (COEX 250A, by Cynthia Cohen)

Cluster 1 Elective Courses

  • Landscape and the Built Environment (ANTH 132b) 
  • Festival and Politics in Latin America (Anthropology 184)
    (at Tufts University: Dr. David Guss)
  • The Body as Text (ENG 144b)
  • Performing the Early Modern Self (ENG  231a)
  • Making it Real: Tactics of Discourse (ENG 280a)
  • City and the Book (FREN 142b) 
  • History of Fashion in Europe (HIST 140a) 
  • Seminar in Psychoanalysis and Biography: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Artist (MUS 209a) 
  • Representing the City in Literature, Art and Archaeology (NEJS 161b)
  • Space and Landscape: (ANTH 115b, by Charles Golden)
  • Mediums and Messages: (COML 163a, by Lisa Swanstrom)
  • European Cultural Studies Proseminar: Modernism, (ECS 100a, by S. Dowden)
  • French Drama of  the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: (FREN 155b, by Jane Hale)
  • Golden Age Drama and Society: (HECS 150a, by Dian Fox)
  • Text and Context: (  THA 207a, by Ryan McKittrick)

Cultural Production Faculty with Performance Interests

  • Mark Auslander (Anthropology)
  • Eric Hill (Theater Arts)
  • Thomas King (English and American Literature)
  • James Mandrell (Romance and Comparative Literature)
  • Richard Parmentier (Anthropology)
  • Ellen Schattschneider (Anthropology)
  • Faith Smith (English and American Literature and Women's and Gender Studies)

Selected Online Resources