Protest in Poetry Performance

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Protest in Poetry, Prose and Performance (A Level V course) This upper level undergraduate course (taught in German) explores how writers and artists have voiced protest and critique over the course of the last century in response to major social problems and political crises with special focus on fascism, war, racism and xenophobia, and environmental destruction. We will start out by exploring what “protest” in the context of artistic expression can mean, and how this relationship has been defined by writers, artists and critics over the past century (Brecht, Adorno, Breger, Obexer, among others). At a more general level, we will discuss how protest is linked to the power of the arts to imagine alternative worlds. The course is organized thematically; throughout a range of literary and artistic genres - and genre-specific approaches to voicing or staging protest - will be explored. These genres include poetry, prose, and drama, but also activist performances and manifestos. Twice during the semester, students will have the opportunity to meet and engage with artists via Zoom: multi-media poet and performer Nika Pfeifer (Vienna, Austria) and author and activist Maxi Obexer (Berlin, Germany). (Both previously taught at Georgetown as Kade writers-in-residence.) While Pfeifer has focused some of her multi-media work on environmental crises, Obexer has employed a range of genres to protest the treatment of refugees in contemporary Europe. In the last part of the course, students will work on their own creative projects that give voice to protest regarding a pressing current issue or concern.