CLab:Politics and Performance

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

ENROLLMENT IN THIS COURSE IS BY INSTRUCTOR APPROVAL ONLY, VIA AN APPLICATION WHICH CAN BE FOUND HERE: https://myguabroad.georgetown.edu/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=10318 Societies throughout the globe use performance, culture, and the arts to remember, represent, and understand complex and often traumatic pasts, and to re-imagine the future. The arts in general, and performance, in particular, play a crucial role in remembering and recovering from conflict and/or genocide, and in rebuilding a future. This course will study this important intersection of politics and performance in diverse examples from the past and the present, from Cambodia to post World War II Europe, to Australia, West Africa, South Africa, and the United States. The recent destruction of monuments and artifacts by ISIS and other extremists has focused attention on the importance attached to controlling history and narratives, but the positive role that the restoration of living culture plays in recovery from conflict has not received sufficient attention, and offers a rich field for study. Using examples ranging from the Civil War and the legacy of slavery and racism here in the United States to the to the Holocaust in World War II Europe to the Cambodian genocide, to more recent events such as the end of apartheid in South Africa and the occupation of Timbuktu, the course will look at how cultural products such as performances, memorials, films, music, and literature narrate and shape the ways these complex and fraught histories are remembered and understood. The process of rebuilding, in which arts and culture plays a vital role, is still ongoing in places like South Africa, Cambodia, and Mali, and the class will be able to learn about these processes directly from the cultural actors leading them. The dual cases of indigenous populations in the United States and in Australia and the roles that diverse arts have played in their struggles to assert identity and envision their futures will provide a fascinating comparative case study. Using a variety of rich and resonant living examples, and in dialogue with leading artists from around the world through the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, we will look closely at how these cultural workers navigate the politics of representation, including the tensions between the spoken and the unspoken, between presence and absence, and between remembrance and erasure. As a centerpiece of the course we will have an optional 1-credit travel portion over Spring break (CULP 291) to Cambodia as guests of Cambodian Living Arts (CLA) and its visionary Executive Director Phloeun Prim, a member of the Lab’s Think Tank. In addition, current Lab Fellow Chankethya Chey, Artistic Director of Amrita Performing Arts in Cambodia, whose celebrated work as a dancer and choreographer engages personal and political history, will interact closely with the students. Cambodian Living Arts has been at the forefront of the revival of Cambodia’s arts sector (90% of Cambodia’s artists were killed in the genocide), and its contribution to the revitalization of the country. Through CLA the students will meet artists shaping Cambodia’s future, as well as key survivors of the Holocaust such as CLA founder Arn Chorn Pond. To better understand how Cambodians remember and present their past, the class will visit key sites of memory of the holocaust such as the “Killing Fields” and “S-21” prison, as well as Youk Chang’s Documentation Center of Cambodia and Rithy Panh’s Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center. In addition students will travel to Battembang to visit the extraordinary circus and arts school Phare Ponleu Selpak and to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat and the home base of Artisans Angkor. After their return from Cambodia, the students will have the opportunity to share their experiences intellectually and creatively as part of relevant public events presented by the Lab on World Theatre Day and/or Holocaust Remembrance Day. Through the Lab’s rich network of relationships students will also engage with organizations such as the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw; the US Holocaust Memorial Museum; Ford’s Theatre; the National Museum of African-American History and Culture; James Ngcobo, Artistic Director of the legendary Market Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa; Native American playwrights Mary Kathryn Nagle, Emily Johnson, and Larissa Fasthorse, Dr. Abdel Kader Haidara, who saved Timbuktu’s manuscripts from the extremists; Manny Ansar, founder of the Festival Au Desert in Timbuktu, and others. This course builds on the highly successful experiences Professors Goldman and Schneider have had co-teaching courses such as Culture and Diplomacy: Performance, Art and Media, drawing students from varied cultural and disciplinary backgrounds, from both SFS and the arts, into rich, collaborative exchanges.