Asian American Performance

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

How is “performance” a significant lens and paradigm for understanding the historical and cultural production of “Asian America”? And what does “performance” as creative expression, critical inquiry, and public engagement, offer for Asian/American politics and consciousness? Intro to Asian American Performance surveys the performing body and Asian racialization through the lens of performance studies, theater, and Asian American studies. Students will examine performance as it encompasses plays and staged performances, experimental performance, performance poetry, film and television, social media, activism, and the everyday. Students will gain a critical understanding of performance, as theory and art, and be introduced to key themes and issues in Asian American performance studies, like immigration and exclusion, abjection, yellow face, orientalism, disidentification, hypersexuality, disability, gender, and sexuality.