Theater Culture Studies II: From Renaissance to Romanticism

3 units

This course provides a survey of theater history from the early seventeenth through mid-nineteenth centuries, covering plays, theories of drama and acting, and the material conditions of theatre production. We will explore events in Asia, the Americas and Europe with particular attention to the Baroque era, Sentimentalism, and Romanticism. The central objectives of the course are 1) to teach students to analyze plays in complex and creative ways, and 2) to cultivate understanding of the ways theater and performance practices reflect the philosophical ideas, aesthetic values, and socio-political realities of their historical context--even as these practices sustained and challenged such ideas, values, and realities.