Performance and Performativity

3 credits · Graduate credit

How are so-called "ordinary" social actions bounded off from the "theatrical," the "artful," or the "make believe"? For whom do such distinctions matter, and why? When and how do performances "perform" authorities and affects, conflicts and contacts, desires and obstacles? When do organizations of performance racialize people, or make genders, or reify nations? When and how might performance subvert them? We will track these and other questions through anthropological and related scholarship that has taken up performance genres, from "everyday" talk to media making reception.