Proposed Course
Performing Power and Individualism on American and German Stages takes an intersectional, interdisciplinary, and intertextual approach to whiteness, critical race theory, and transnationalism. In light of the intertwined history of the United States and Germany for over 200 years, this course sets out to examine the contemporary moment in light of this history. This course will apply theory to theatre texts, performances, audio-visual materials, and other writings. This course consists of six modules that attempt to examine how whiteness works to remain a non-racialized subject position in order to protect and reify expectations of white privilege. Since whiteness uses “the other” in order to define itself, this course will rely and lean upon non-white voices to mark whiteness. Because whiteness persists in the contemporary, this course will identify and examine strategies for marking, unmasking, and undermining whiteness.
In this module, we read Stuart Hall's "Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance" and Lucas Hnath's play The Christians in an attempt to better understand how notions of "empire" persist in unlikely places. In addition to prompts from the syllabus, how can we connect Hall's ideas to the #oscarssowhite moment in 2016 or Carlton Pearson's resignation from traditional Christianity in 2002?