Performance & Spectators

(1 Credit Hour) · Undergraduate

Camp. as an adjective, goes back at least to 1909. In its oldest sense, it was defined as "addicted to actions and gestures of exaggerated emphasis, pleasantly ostentatious, or in manner affected.” But from 1920, in theatrical argot, camp connoted homosexual or lesbian and was in general use with that meaning by 1945. In 1964, Susan Sontag's famous "Notes on Camp" defined camp as a failed seriousness, a love of exaggeration and artifice, the privileging of style over content, and being alive to the double sense in which some things can be taken. Sontag aligned camp especially with gay male taste. Camp can be seen both as a mode of performance – camping it up-- and as a way of seeing things and spectatorship – camp as being in the eye of the beholder. This class will consider theories of camp by Sontag and others; camp performance by Mae West, Judy Garland, Madonna, and others; camp spectatorship of horror films, musicals, and more. WE will consider gay male camp, feminist camp, lesbian camp, the mainstreaming of camp, and the meaning of camp today. This is a one credit course that can be taken as satisfactory/unsatisfactory or for a standard letter grade. Course will meet one day a week for 8 weeks.