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Staging American History
ENGL262 SP

This colloquium will focus on the ways in which 20th-century dramatists have used the "two [or three] hours' traffic" of the modern stage to (re)construct a visible, graspable, usable past for their audience. We will discuss spectatorship, privilege, and the construction of an audience, as well as the representation, distortion, and recreation of the past. Students will research the production history and critical reception of a single play as a way of figuring out what was at stake for the writers, producers and audiences in presenting and viewing history the way they did. The point will not be to prove that art distorts history, but rather to examine the motivations (conscious and unconscious, personal and ideological) and the mechanisms of this inevitable distortion.

MAJOR READINGS

Wilder, OUR TOWN Hellman, THE LITTLE FOXES Sherwood, ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS O'Neill, AH WILDERNESS and MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA Miller, THE CRUCIBLE Hwang, THE DREAM AND THE RAILWAY Wilson, FENCES Park, THE AMERICAN PLAY

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Frequent written exercises, class presentations, and a final project.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

This course is an American Studies Junior Colloquium. Permission of Instructor forms will be distributed to Junior American Studies majors on a first-come/first-served basis in the American Studies Office beginning on the first day of preregistration. Others will be admitted during Drop/Add if space is available.

Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL    Grading Mode: Student Option   

Prerequisites: NONE

Last Updated on MAR-24-2000

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