Uneasy Embodiments: Racial and Gendered Objecthood

This seminar, open to all students, focuses on the distinctions between subject and object, human and non-human, agent and victim, and examines how categories of social difference, including race, gender, sexuality, disability, and class, inform these distinctions. We will analyze performance that demonstrates uneasy problems about personhood, with an emphasis on Asian/American and black aesthetic works, through the frameworks of performance studies and queer and feminist theory. Students can expect to study and create performance, read critical texts, and write a research essay.