TDPS458L

Students must be junior standing or higher. This seminar will investigate dance and performance as both a subject area and a mode of inquiry, through an investigation of contemporary choreography, visual art, and other performance practices. In conjunction with readings and discussions from dance history and theory, performance and cultural studies, and arts criticism, we will consider history, aesthetics, and culture. We will address questions of subjectivity, location, audience, commodification, conventionality, staging and the representation of body politics. Students are expected to engage in critical viewing of dances and other art forms, with in-depth analyses of readings, participation in class discussions, culminating in a research project.