The following information is divided into two sections:
1) a list of core courses, and
2) expandable lists by quarter of elective and core courses.
CORE COURSES
PFS 200: Methods, Materials and Performance
Research
Essential research tools in performance and related fields;
bibliographies, primary sources; methods of evaluating and
presenting evidence; delineating research areas in the field;
current debates; researching, shaping and presenting oral and
written paper.
PFS 265A: Modes of Production
Introduces students to the literature of performance production
in a variety of media: theatre, dance, film, video,
computer-based, looking at cultural, aesthetic, rhetorical and
political theory. May be repeated.
PFS 265B: Signification and the Body
Introduces students to analysis of the body in performance,
drawing on theoretical models from several fields. Material will
vary depending on instructor but examples might include body
mechanics, the body and social behavior, body movement and
theories of rhetoric, historical theories of body and soul. May
be repeated.
PFS 265C: Performance and Society
Introduces students to the role of performance (broadly defined),
in everyday life, sociopolitical negotiation, identity, social
movements, the media, the environment, the state, transnational
and global sites. Material will differ depending on instructor,
but topics might include presidential elections, performative
aspects of medicine and law, religious ritual, ecological
activism, among others. May be repeated.
PFS 265D: Theories of Performance
Studies
Performance Studies is a new discipline, growing out of several
others including history and analysis of text within the fields
of theatre and dance, anthropology and ethnology, linguistics,
sociology, cultural and technological studies. There is a very
substantial field of theory, history and criticism that has
developed, which is integral to the understanding and development
of performance research generally. Depending on the instructor
the topics may vary, but could include history from Stanislavski
to Grotowski, the impact of poststructural theory on performance,
and/or ethical responsibility in performance. May be repeated.
PFS 290: Colloquia in Performance Studies
The 290 course is the place in the curriculum reserved for
pre-qualifying exam students to engage visiting artists, speakers
and events in person and in written form. You will attend a
series of 290-eligible events through the year, write a 1-2 page
summary response (summarizing the event/ performance / talk and
responding with your thoughts to contextualize, discuss, and
problematize). At some point in the year (often in the
Spring Quarter), you will enroll in 290 with your Major Professor
or 1st year advisor, and hand these in to them at the end of the
year. The events and the writing will hopefully do several
things:
Give you credit for support / attending events
Expand / explode notions of a defined canon and focus on the
evolving nature of the field
Give you an opportunity to talk with your professor about
performances
Create a reservoir of case studies to draw on at a later
point (exams, research, articles, dissertation, etc.)
Recognizing that many events now enable remote participation,
here are the guidelines for eligible 290 events:
The number of 290 write-ups required is 6-8 unique events /
speakers.
290 eligible events will include program events and other
performance / PAR related events and research that take place
both outside of the program and off-campus. Just identify
and attend something you think might qualify, and then use your
write-up to justify why / how it fits (per the above, the summary
response already kind of does this)
To do this, check in with your professor and then ask Marian for
the CRN for the 290 associated with your professor. Arrange to
submit the 6-8 writeups to them by the end of the quarter.
They will submit a satisfactory grade after review.
PFS 299: Individual Study, Prof TBD by Student
As a Performance Studies core course, PFS 299: Individual studies
offers students the opportunity to set up an independent study on
a subject that may not be offered within the catalog with a
professor of their choosing. It is important to note that
independent studies must be approved by both the PFS Program
Coordinator and the Professor(s), in order to obtain the correct
CRN for registration. Additionally scheduling must be organized
between the student and the Professor(s). May register anywhere
from 4 to 12 units.
GSW 200B, Problems in Feminist Research, Beenash
Jafri for the Feminist Theory & Research DE (W 1:10-4pm)
COM 210: Themes and Issues in Comparative Literature:
World Cinema, Sheldon Hsiao-Peng Lu
This course examines “world cinema” as a concept, as a critical
discourse, and above all as the practices of diverse cinematic
traditions of the world. We will also tackle related categories
of contemporary film studies such as “national cinema,”
“transnational cinema,” “global cinema,” “third cinema,”
“third-world cinema,” and postcolonial cinema. Depending on
student interests and enrollment, comparative case studies will
be drawn from countries and regions from around the world, such
as Asia, Europe, Africa, and America. Special attention
will be given to East-West cross-cultural interflows in the
traveling of images, discourses, and ideas. As we look at
some pivotal moments in world film history, we also raise broad
issues in current film studies such as globalization, diaspora,
cinematic style, national identity, visual culture, and film
industry. Students will examine the ideas, practices, and
styles of a variety of filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein,
Dziga Vertov, R. W. Fassbinder, Jean-Luc Godard, Yasujiro Ozu,
Gillo Pontecorvo, Wong Kar-wai, Jia Zhangke, Zhang Yimou, Ousmane
Sembene, Claire Denis, and others.
MUS 223: Topics in Ethnomusicology
(Transcription of Music and Dance), Tues 1:10 – 4, 230 Music
Bldg., crn 42165
Prerequisites: open to graduate students in
music; advanced music undergraduates, Anthropology, Sociology,
Performance Studies, Theater and Dance, Cultural Studies, and
other graduate students may enroll with consent of the
instructor.
Course Description and Objectives:
This course is concerned with musical and dance transcription,
that is, the graphic representation of musical sound and its
associated dance practices. Transcription is a tool that has
served musicians, dancers, scholars, and educators from different
cultures and periods to deepen their understanding of music and
dance, facilitate the creative process, and communicate and
reinforce their reflections and analyses. Music and dance
scholars, especially ethnomusicologists and choreomusicologists,
routinely use transcription to notate and analyze the musical and
dance practices they study, which frequently come from oral
traditions or lack available scores. In doing so, they may adapt
methods held to be universal such as Western staff notation or
the Laban method, culture-specific methods such as South Indian
solkattu, Korean jeongganbo or Chinese
jianpu, or even propose their own.
What is gained and lost when we transcribe music and dance
from oral traditions? What are the ethical dimensions of this
practice? What notational systems are more appropriate for
certain kinds of analyses or repertoires? How can the analytical
exercise of transcription work in tandem with other forms of
analysis such as historical or discourse analysis? What is gained
when we examine music and dance as an inseparable unit?
This seminar is primarily geared towards graduate students in
music, dance, and performance studies and secondarily to students
from other departments who are interested in musical and dance
traditions. (Please notice that students outside the Music
Department are NOT required to have prior knowledge of notational
methods.) In the seminar students will improve or develop their
transcription skills, analyze music and dance from a variety of
performance traditions from around the world, read and discuss
scholarship about transcription, learn, apply, and critique
existing transcription techniques, and ideally develop their own
methodologies and notational systems. During weekly workshop-like
meetings, the class will comment on and constructively critique
each other’s transcriptions, interact with guests who have
developed their own notational solutions, and discuss academic
readings. Students will also complete a final essay (a
transcription and prose analysis of an audiovisual recording,
chosen in consultation with the instructor) and present their
findings to the class in a conference format.
CRD 249: Media Innovation and Community
Development, Jesse Drew, W 1:10 – 5, Bainer 1132, crn 41670.
Flyer.
This course will investigate the pivotal role played by
innovative media in accelerating social change and enhancing
community, social, and economic life in an era of disappearing
traditional media. Class will examine the central issues
involving media and communications through
focused discussions on selected books, case studies, articles,
on-line sites and guest speakers. The course will focus on
historical, practical and theoretical issues involving media in
community organizing, social justice movements, democracy
initiatives, and economic
development. A central component of class is helping students
conceptualize their own ideas from their own disciplines and
develop a framework for writing a thesis or dissertation.
ANT 210: Practices of Writing, Cristiana
Giordano, Wed. 12:10 – 3, Shrem Museum 1303, crn 11692
This seminar explores different forms and practices of writing,
and the reasons why, at times, we get stuck in the process of
putting words on the page. Through playful prompts, collaborative
exchanges, and rigorous reflection on why and how we write, this
seminar provides a space to practice writing academically while
drawing from different forms such as poetry, fiction, plays, and
the arts in general. Some of this evocative power may teach us a
more playful and productive posture towards research material,
and a more performative understanding of narrative that can
translate into either new forms of text (essays, plays, short
stories, etc.), or into a revitalized existing practice of
academic writing. The seminar is appropriate for graduate
students who are writing dissertations, starting anew in grad
school, preparing to do fieldwork, making performances, and
engaging in the task of textual and non-textual representation
and creation. It is also intended for those who have ambitions to
publish successfully. The seminar requires a commitment to one’s
development and training as a writer, with activities including
discussion of short readings of masterful examples, writing in
class, sharing work, and creating a supportive writing community.
It includes short and frequent online writing exercises in which
you advance your writing craft by engaging actual readers, as
both an invitation to write and a way to sense how your work
lands in the reading experience of others.
Fall 2024
PFS 200: Methods & Materials in Theater
Research, Larry Bogad (LM), Tues 1:10-4 pm, 112 Art
Annex, crn 42769.
Students will engage in a series of PFS faculty guest
lectures including lectures by LM. Faculty will present material
and workshops. Graduate students will develop and
present their scholarship and praxis. May be taken as
PFS 200 or PFS 298, crn 42814.
ANT 210 / PFS 265B: Artificial Bodies, Joe
Dumit, R 12:10 – 3, SocSci 1246, crn 50239 (non-human bodies, AI,
hacking biologies, Wonder as method2, palliative care for
corporations, hospicing modernity, co-sensing,
PFS 280: Practice as Research Laboratory (1-6
units), crn by instructor
Individual, collective or collaborative practice as research.
Discussion and exploration of examples, portfolio development and
documentation strategies. May be repeated up to 36 units
total. Prerequisite(s): Completion or concurrent enrollment
of PFS 200 recommended; consent of instructor.
PFS 298 / DRA 158: Tactical Performance, Larry
Bogad (LM), MW 2:10-4 pm, Art 230.
This class will study theory and history of tactical performance,
do exercises, and devise/design actions. Students will work
on other skills like drafting press releases, interacting with
media and state authorities, and grant writing. PFS grad
students are invited to take this class as a 4-unit PFS 298, crn
42815 – or potentially as DRA 158 (but only one undergrad
class can count toward the PhD degree).
PFS 298, place / day / time TBA, Kris Fallon,
crn 42805
This mandatory fall quarter seminar for first year PFS students
will introduce you to our unique program, as well as to skills,
frameworks, and people to help you succeed as a graduate student
in general. By the end of this seminar you will have a clear map
of your time in Performance Studies from the next quarter to your
dissertation defense, and have close and collaborative
connections with the rest of the first year cohort.
AHI 200A Visual Theory and Interpretive Methods,
Heghnar Watenpaugh, Mon 1:10-4 pm, Everson Hall 157, crn 20722
This seminar is neither a history of art history, nor does it
provide a menu of methods for the study of art history, even
though history and method will be among our key concerns.
Instead, this seminar emphasizes the relationship between the
aesthetic theories that drive our field and the social history of
the institutions that sustain it, including museums. The debates
we will examine include: key assumptions in visual studies,
the roles of the art historian (humanist, scholar, historian,
connoisseur, expert, philosopher, archivist, linguist,
archaeologist, authenticator…), the relationships between art
history and allied disciplines, the critical importance of
aesthetic philosophy, and the methods of art interpretation. We
will scrutinize art history’s evolving self-perception and its
most cherished myths, its links to enlightenment and modernity,
its relationship with technologies such as photography, its
allied institutions such as museums and exhibitions, the workings
of the art market. We will look at art history as a form of
writing and as performance. We will consider the changing
roles of art historians and other arts professionals,
reflecting on art history’s resilience, transformations and
resurgence in the contemporary art world.
Spring 2024
PFS 265B / STS 210 / ANT 210, Slow, Collective, Presence,
Wonder, Joe Dumit and Marisol de la Cadena, W 2:10
– 5, STS conference room, 31535
PFS 265C, Performing the Self(ie): Cultural Production
and Identity Construction on Social Media, Katlin
Sweeny, T 1:10 – 4:00, 1107 Cruess, crn 57499
On platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok,
nonfamous people gain access to a range of interactive features
that enable their multifaceted participation in the U.S.
mediascape. Through their social media profiles, people present a
version of themselves online that involves self-adorning the
body, performing a public persona, appealing to platform
algorithms, and engaging with an audience. Their savvy use of
platform tools, such as video editing, hashtags, photo filters,
and comment sections, can facilitate their emergence as digital
“content creators,” and in some cases, as social media
influencers and internet celebrities. Additionally, a creator’s
visual-verbal depictions of one or more of their marginalized
identities may be interpreted by viewers as a form of media
representation beyond legacy media.
In this course, we will examine how social media content creators
establish a self-mediation methodology in their cultural
production and form a co-creative dynamic with their viewers
through their public engagement. We will also consider how
viewers can utilize their role as post respondent in comment
sections to initiate discourse that extends beyond the content of
the creator’s original post. Throughout the quarter, we will look
to examples of mediated selfhood and co-creative interaction on
social media found in (but not limited to) selfies, short- and
long-form video, and digital comics. In doing so, we will
identify how content creators and their viewers utilize their
social media presence to contribute forms of cultural critique,
media representation, entertainment, and community organizing.
Topics: Collecting the Arts from the Middle East in historical
and theoretical perspective. We will consider all aspects of the
history of collecting – such as the manifold processes that
result in objects traveling across vast distances and acquiring
new functions and contexts. We will also do deep dives on the
“cast of characters” that often play multiple roles in this
process– art dealers, art collectors, museum officials, looters,
fixers, middle men, attorneys, scholars, and curators. Finally we
will critically consider manifold resistance movements focused on
defending cultural heritage in war and peacetime and pressing
restitution claims, as well as movements that advocate the
selective erasure of cultural heritage and battles over memory
and history.
PFS 265A Modes of Production: Press Reset: An
Alternate History of Game Studies, Patrick LeMieux,
Thursdays, 5:10 – 8 p.m., 234 Cruess (Mod Lab), crn 45235
What if instead of the cultural studies, philosophies, and
anthropologies of Huizinga, Suits, and Sutton-Smith, game studies
was founded on the phenomenologies, auto-ethnographies, and
playful practices of Fink, James, DeKoven, Sudnow, and Buckles?
In this course we will try to build a counterfactual history of
game studies by conducting a survey of both the foundational
texts as well as practice-based research operating on the margins
of the field. To put our theories into practice we will also
experiment in a series of hands-on workshops where we play
together in order to situate our understanding of games within
longer traditions of embodiment, phenomenology, performance, and
play.
PFS 265A / ANT 210, Getting Caught: A
collaboration on and off stage between theater and
anthropology, Cristiana Giordano, W 2:10 – 5, 1107
Cruess Hall, crn 12228
This graduate seminar is an exploration of and a cross
pollination between research and narrative practices in theater
and anthropology. By creating a dialogue between these
disciplines in a laboratory format, we explore techniques that
will enrich our engagement with anthropological questions and
embodied production. We will investigate, one the one hand, how
anthropologists can learn from theater a more playful posture
towards research, and a more performative understanding of
narrative that can translate either into new forms of writing and
production (essays, plays, short stories, installations,
performance pieces etc.), or into a revitalized existing practice
of academic writing. On the other hand, theater makers can learn
from anthropology a more nuanced understanding of political and
cultural contexts, new approaches to the different discourse
formations around events and social issues, and ways to pay
attention to the complexities of worlds and their grammars.
This is not a seminar on the anthropology of theater nor an
acting or playwrighting class. We simultaneously engage
theatrical devising practices, anthropological modes of attending
to forms of life, and affect and post-dramatic theories, to
practice what we call Affect Theater. In this context,
theatrical devices will provide us with tools to analyze our
findings through the body and the embodiment of narratives in
space. By exploring our research through the elements of the
stage (lights, sets, objects, sound, bodies etc.), theater can
teach us to engage the empirical more viscerally in our writing.
Anthropological listening to the intricacies of stories that are
embedded and woven within specific worlds can broaden and deepen
the ways in which theater makers render narratives for the stage.
MUS 221: Music and Nature, Beth Levy, M 1:10 -
4, 230 Music
This course will explore changing conceptions of music and nature
from the 18th to the 21st centuries. How and why have
composers attempted to depict or reflect the natural world in
their works? What happens when musicians around the world
conceive their relationships to the environment? What is
the relationship between natural sounds and musical ones?
What role can musicians play in increasing environmental
awareness at a time of crisis? Students may select from any
genre or time period for their own individual projects, which
will be shared with the class at several stages, culminating in
final presentations during the last week of the quarter.
This introductory graduate seminar will survey a range of
historical and contemporary approaches to media, media theory,
and media philosophy. A significant unit of the course will focus
on contemporary engagements with Marshall McLuhan’s methods and
thought by scholars such as Sarah Sharma, Armond R. Towns, Nicole
Starosielski, etc but we will also try to cover a range of media
studies work as well. We will examine how the field of media
studies has been shaped by multiple disciplines ranging from
information theory and cybernetics to cultural studies and
critical theory to infrastructure studies and environmentalism.
We will think about issues of human embodiment, identity,
materiality, economy, and ecology in relation to the history of
media technologies. Beyond using the term media as a descriptor
for either technological platforms or communication protocols,
this course investigates how a practical and philosophical
understanding of media might help live in the twentieth-first
century.
The goal of this seminar is to think about the role of archives
and libraries in the production of knowledge, particularly in
areas pertinent to STS. Along with a review of the canonical STS
literature and theories on the subject, we will be exploring
unorthodox or less studied forms of preservation, archival
collection, and librarianship. These will include shadow
libraries like libgen, Sci-Hub, Monoskop, and Anna’s Archive;
emergent collections like the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive;
biomedical data collection and preservation practices; seed banks
and botanical gardens; the Prelinger Archive and their approach
to moving image preservation; documenting and preserving
ephemeral knowledge, bodily techniques, practices, and
performance; data management and data friction for
ultra-large-scale materials in domains like climate and high
energy physics research; and the role of all of these and more in
the production, not just maintenance, of knowledge itself.
This is a graduate level fiction writing workshop. Priority for
seats is given to MFA candidates in creative writing. Students
from other programs are welcome, space permitting; interested
students should send a writing sample (fiction) to me (Professor
Corin) when requesting permission to enroll.
I want the course to be a place of refuge and invention. You can
work on long or short form fiction, fiction that is conventional
or unconventional in form. It just has to be literary, it has to
want to be art in its broadest most expansive, inclusive, serious
and irreverent efforts. We’ll read the new Justin Torres novel
Blackouts together (it’s just out now, so I will read it for the
first time with you) along with a smattering of short stories
I’ll put up on canvas. Make sure you get a hard copy of the
Torres to work with (unless you have a disability that makes an
electronic version better for you.)
Please register asap, and turn on Canvas notifications for email,
so that when I contact you via Canvas to prepare for our first
meeting before school starts, you’ll get the message. It also
helps folks on the wait list know their schedules.
Fall 2023
UWP 220 / PFS 200, Methods, Materials and Performance
Research, Marit Macarthur, Mon. 2:10 – 5, 1107
Cruess, crn 51457 (this is a UWP class, counts as a PFS 200)
This course will prepare graduate students in performance
studies, and related fields in the humanities and social
sciences, to undertake scholarly research and understand
graduate-level expectations for academic writing. We will explore
current methods and debates in performance studies, and consider
how to articulate the insights of practice-as-research and
contribute to ongoing scholarly conversations. Assignments will
include an autoethnography, an informal analysis of and
presentation on an academic journal, an annotated bibliography, a
seminar paper, and a mini-conference presentation, all linked to
each student’s developing interests. Faculty from a range of
disciplines affiliated with performance studies will also visit
the class and share their research. The required texts
are What a Body Can Do: Technique as Knowledge, Practice
as Research by Ben Spatz (Routledge, 2015) and articles
provided on Canvas. Performance Studies: An
Introduction, 4th edition, by Richard
Schechner and Sarah Lucie (Routledge, 2020) and The
Performance StudiesReader, Ed. Henry Bial and
Sara Brady (Routledge, 2015), are also recommended.
Description: In this course, we’ll read foundational theory at
the intersection of performance studies and media studies to
explore the relationship between human bodies and performance
technologies, including but not exclusively digital technologies.
Students will select a performance object of their choice as
their focus for the course: this can be anything from a
particular production (including a production of the student’s
own making), an object that does performative work on the theater
stage (e.g. costume, props), a digital object (e.g. videogame,
database), a practice (e.g. Meyerhold biomechanics, yoga), or a
genre of performance (e.g. circus, poetry slam, puppetry).
Students are also welcome theorize their own performance work as
their performance object.
AHI 190J/290 Provenance Studies, Heghnar
Watenpaugh, M 1:10-4, crn 52515, 157 Everson Hall
ANT 210 The Essayistic Imagination, Tarik
Elhaik, W 3:10 – 6, 224 Young Hall, crn 22233
An early modern narrative form (eg. Montaigne, Ibn Battoutah)
that lives on in contemporary media (cinema, radio, podcasts),
the “essay form” is an inspiring tool for remediating our
fieldwork encounters and inquiries. A fascinating characteristic
of the essay is that it authorizes the inquirer to drift and to
playfully move between the sciences and the
arts. Essayistic playfulness is nourished by both
scientific and artistic imaginations, gluttonously drawing from
their respective aesthetic and conceptual traditions, from their
respective modes of juxtaposing, re-ordering, re-classifying,
re-assembling, and re-curating the real. The ethical
substance of the essay is the prefix “re-“. Theodor
Adorno went as far as saying that the essay is classed among “the
oddities” and “heresies”! The seminar will reexamine
and pay tribute to such narrative oddities and
heresies. Students will be invited to do exercises in
which they will create their own essays (in single or multimedia
form).
STS 200, Colin Milburn
Spring 2023
ANT 210/PFS 265B: Bodies, Joseph Dumit, Wed 2:10-5,
Young Hall 224, CRN 32327
Description: Negotiating Need and Desire. Develop your voice as a
collaborator. You will explore: Why we collaborate? How we
collaborate in context of our personal, creative goals: How we
open ourselves to other creatives.
MUS 223 Topics in Ethnomusicology, Music Composition
and/in/vs Ethnomusicology, Henry Spiller Tu 1:10-4,
Music 230, CRN 52040
Description: In this seminar, we investigate the notion of
“music composition” and examine the evolution and role of
“composer” in and beyond the Western European tradition.
Comp Lit 210/CDM 210 World Cinema, Sheldon
Lu, Tu 2:10-5:00, Hutchison 102, CRN 37297
Description: This course examines “world cinema” as a concept, as
a critical discourse, and above all as the practices of diverse
cinematic traditions of the world. We will also tackle related
categories of contemporary film studies such as “national
cinema,” “transnational cinema,” “global cinema,” “third cinema,”
“third-world cinema,” and postcolonial
cinema. Depending on student interests and enrollment,
comparative case studies will be drawn from countries and regions
from around the world, such as Asia, Europe, Africa, and
America. Special attention will be given to East-West
cross-cultural interflows in the traveling of images, discourses,
and ideas. As we look at some pivotal moments in world
film history, we also raise broad issues in current film studies
such as globalization, diaspora, cinematic style, national
identity, visual culture, and film industry. Students
will examine the ideas, practices, and styles of a variety of
filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, R. W.
Fassbinder, Jean-Luc Godard, Yasujiro Ozu, Gillo Pontecorvo, Wong
Kar-wai, Jia Zhangke, Zhang Yimou, Ousmane Sembene, Claire Denis,
and others.
Winter 2023
PFS 265C Performance and Society, Larry Bogad,
Wednesdays 2:10-5 PM, 222 Wright Hall.
Description: This seminar examines the often-fraught
relationship between politically motivated performances (broadly
defined), social movements, the media, and the
state. Students will analyze and discuss the texts,
and will be responsible for independent research in preparation
for class presentations. Final project will be a major
research paper, or a practical project complemented by a shorter
paper which theorizes and justifies the project.
Description: Study of a Literary Movement. This course will be
devoted to ancient, medieval, and early modern comedy, with a
particular focus on slaves and servants as protagonists. The
primary texts will be in Latin, English, and especially French,
with translations available.
PFS 265/ANT 210 Aspects of Culture Structure. What
Stories Tell and Don’t Tell: Memory and Archives between Textual
and Non-textual Experimentation Cristiana Giordano,
Wednesdays 10-12:50, 224 Young Hall, CRN 45349
Description: This seminar explores the forms and practices
of representation, storytelling, and narrative production in the
social sciences, humanities, and the arts. We ask: What is a
story? What is in a story? How do we, as
anthropologists, artists, performers, and philosophers choose
what constitutes a story? How do we relate to what in a story
remains unsaid? For social scientists and artists working with
empirical material, what constitutes the “real”? what different
kinds of archives do we encounter in our research projects? How
do we move from our ethnographic, archival, visual, and sonic
research material into a text, installation, or performance? How
do the different temporalities of memory affect the time of
telling and listening? We will explore experiments in
ethnographic research and writing that play with truth and
representation, translation and creation, blurring the boundaries
of the real and the unreal. We will draw from other
disciplines and practices to tell stories in ways that rather
than reproducing a linear effect, introduce estrangement and
interruption and compel readers and audiences to think
differently about a given event or world. Readings will range
from classic and contemporary ethnographies to short stories and
novels, from reportage photo-stories and plays to philosophical
texts and art installations. In our readings and discussions, we
will approach stories and archives as linear accounts, montages,
and dream like assemblages of words and images, in their
fictional, documentary, performative, and evocative forms.
STS 200 Theories & Methods in Science &
Technology Studies, Joseph Dumit, Wednesdays
1:10-4PM, Social Science & Humanities 1246, CRN 45375
Description: Theories and methods of Science & Technology Studies
as a field of critical and empirical scholarship, and examination
of various contexts in which STS has emerged worldwide.
MUS 223, Topics in Ethnomusicology: Issues in Africa
Musicology, Scott Linford, Mondays 2:10-5, Music 230.
CRN 34110
Description: What methods and perspectives have scholars adopted
in researching African music, and what representational,
analytical, and ethical issues do they face? What are the musical
legacies of colonialism, and how have contemporary African
musicians responded to lingering coloniality while envisioning
new futures and contributing to global culture? We will examine a
variety of African music research perspectives: ethnographic,
analytical, self-reflective, filmic, and compositional (including
African pianism and operatic writing). We will also explore a
variety of African musics from across the continent, including
traditional, pop, and art music.
WMS 201 Special Topics in Feminist Theory & Research: The
Settler Colonial Question Beenash Jafri,
Tuesdays 10-12:50, Hart Hall 1208, CRN 44432.
Description: What is settler colonialism and (why) does it
matter? Over the last two decades, settler colonialism has
emerged as a keyword not only in gender and sexuality studies,
but across interdisciplines such as cultural studies, ethnic
studies, American studies, and environmental studies. At the same
time, settler colonial studies—both its field
formation, and its interventions—has come under question by
scholars in a number of overlapping fields. Critics have noted
troubling ways in which settler colonial studies is perceived as
substitute for Native American/Indigenous studies, for instance;
or tendencies to exceptionalize and isolate settler colonialism
from other forms of historical violence. Rather than offering an
overview of settler colonial studies, the course
will ask after the conversations and debates that
the concept of settler colonialism has
animated, particularly engaging the insights of Indigenous queer
and feminist scholarship, as well as critical ethnic studies
critiques. The geographical focus of the class is primarily (but
not exclusively) the US and Canada, though a transnational frame
will orient our discussions.
HMR 200B/CST 210/SPA 202 Memory, Culture, and Human
Rights, Michael Lazara, Tuesdays 2:10-5, Olson 18.
Description: Although “memory” has been a topic for
intellectual reflection since classical antiquity, it has sparked
analysis and debate in academia since the 1980s, particularly due
to the rise of Holocaust Studies and the urgent need to reflect
on the causes and consequences of human rights violations around
the world. Crossing the social sciences, humanities, and the
arts, memory has become a category for critical inquiry as well
as a political and ethical imperative that links intellectual
reflection to political activism both during and after
authoritarian regimes, wars, civil conflicts, genocide, slavery,
and other traumatic and discriminatory histories. Over the past
30 years, memory studies have become institutionalized in the
U.S. and abroad in the form of M.A. programs, certificate
programs, conferences, and specialized journals promoting
scholarship in this area. This seminar will explore the
productivity of “memory” an analytical category through which to
do cultural studies work and for thinking about human rights. We
will discuss how societal actors in different historical,
cultural, and national settings construct meanings of past
political violence, inter-group conflicts, and human rights
struggles.
Fall 2022
PFS 200: Methods and Materials in Theatre
Research, Jessica Perea, Tuesdays 2:10-5PM, Mondavi
Center CRN 44854
Description: Essential research tools in theatre and related
fields; bibliographies, primary sources; methods of evaluating
and presenting evidence; delineating research areas in the field.
PFS 259: Topics in Contemporary Theatre &
Performance, Jon Rossini, Thursdays 1:10-4, Wright 222.
CRN 44855
PFS 265A: Modes of Production, TBA, CRN 44856
AHI 200A: Visual Theory and Interpretive
Methods, Heghnar Watenpaugh, Mondays 1:10-4, Everson
Hall157, CRN 20761
Description: Close study of selected recent developments in
interpretive methodology used by art historians and other
analysts of visual culture and the place of those developments
within art history’s history and in the larger field of social,
cultural and historical analysis.
Description: Writing of prose fiction. Evaluation of written
materials and individual student conferences.
Spring 2022
DES 222, James Housefield, Fridays 12:10 -
3 PM
Description: Seminar—3 hours; independent study.
Prerequisite: course 221; graduate standing in Design or consent
of instructor. Focused on research methods and critical
writing related to design topics including case studies, original
and secondary sources, critical reviews. Expectation of a paper
meeting professional standards suitable for publication from each
student at end of course. Requires commitment to an
advance-scheduled weekly session with writing tutor, 30 minutes,
independent of class.
EDU 248: Academic Language and Literacies, Dr.
Kerry Enright, R 12:10-3:00pm CRN 61592
In this course, we examine, and sometimes problematize, theories
and research on academic language and literacies, with particular
attention to their applications in classrooms enrolling
racialized and language minoritized learners. Readings will
include theoretical and empirical work related to K-12 classrooms
in the United States. Depending on student interest and areas of
inquiry, readings may also address heritage and world language
instruction in higher ed or international contexts. Typically,
students will use basic qualitative methods to gather and analyze
classroom language and literacy data. If pandemic concerns make
this challenging in Spring 2022, students may choose to
collaborate on data collection or draw from the instructor’s
existing data sets for analysis and final papers. GGE Students
may count this course toward the “Advanced Research Methods”
requirement with consent of their advisor.
EDU 249: Classroom Discourse Analysis, Dr.
Kerry Enright, M 1:40-4:30pm, CRN 62364
Classrooms are complex sites of discursive interaction. Discourse
norms and routines are shaped by interactions among teachers’
language ideologies and curricular objectives, students’ diverse
communicative repertoires and goals, and the materials and
technologies of the classroom. Texts from classroom discourse
analysts employing critical discourse analytic (Rymes, 2016) and
microethnographic (Bloome, 2022) perspectives will guide us in
data collection and analysis for individual or group projects.
Readings of foundational and contemporary studies of classroom
discourse will contextualize the potential and limitations of
these methods and help us to articulate important questions
related to teaching, learning, and educational justice that can
be explored through classroom discourse analysis. While the
methods texts center English-medium U.S. classrooms, students
interested in bilingual and second language settings in the U.S.
and internationally have found the course helpful. Empirical work
on the syllabus will be selected based on the interests and needs
of the students who enroll.
MUS 223: Topics in Ethnomusicology, Juan Diego
Diaz, CRN 62323, T 1:10 – 4
Description: Ethnography is a research method developed by
anthropologists to study people’s cultures through deep
immersion. Music and dance scholars, especially
ethnomusicologists and ethnochoreologists, have adapted it to
understand how and why people make music and dance relevant in
their lives. In this seminar we will discuss what ethnography, as
method and practice, may offer for the study of music and dance
in the context of culture and what are its practical and ethical
pitfalls. Students will learn about the intellectual history of
musical/dance ethnography and the concept of fieldwork (what are
the “field” and the “work”?) through reading and discussion of
analytical texts and selected ethnographies. We will also learn,
criticize, and apply the standard techniques of participant
observation, interviewing, learning musical/dance repertoires,
audio and video recording, and fieldnotes taking. Finally,
digital and multi-sited ethnography, as well as the critical
concept of ethnographic refusal will be discussed. Students will
apply the learned concepts and techniques in a final essay based
on an original mini-ethnography focusing on a topic of their own
choice.
This seminar is primarily geared toward graduate students in
music, dance, and performance studies and secondarily to students
from other departments who are interested in researching musical
and dance traditions. Students outside the Music Department are
NOT required to have performance experience or prior knowledge of
music theory.
PFS 265A Media Theory / Media Practice,
Patrick LeMieux, W, 12:10 – 3, crn 36431, Cruess 1106
This graduate course introduces students to the interlinked
fields of media theory and media practice. In this class we will
read, think, talk, make, and critique media together. Starting
with a range of historical and critical approaches to media, we
will examine how the field of media studies has been shaped by
multiple disciplines ranging from information theory and
cybernetics to cultural studies and critical theory to
infrastructure studies and environmentalism. Then, engaging
practice-based research methodologies including media
archaeology, platform/software/code studies, text mining and data
analysis, video essay and game design, we will enrich our
relationships to our objects of study. How do we think about
issues of human embodiment, identity, materiality, economy, and
ecology in relation to the history of media technologies? Beyond
using the term media as a descriptor for either technological
platforms or communication protocols, this course investigates
what a practical and philosophical understanding of media offers
us for living in the twentieth-first century. Previous technical
experience is not required, but this is a graduate level course
and will proceed at a brisk pace. Students should come to class
ready to engage complex readings, hands-on prototyping, in-class
discussion, and rigorous critique.
ANT 210 / PFS 265AAspects of
Cultural Structures: The Experimental Real, Cristiana
Giordano (Remote Fridays 9:00 am – 11:50 am CRN 12205)
What constitutes the “real”? This is a question that both
anthropology and the performing arts ask in their respective
practices of representation and writing. In this seminar, we will
approach this question by working at the threshold of different
disciplines and drawing from the performing arts and humanities a
more visceral non-representational relation to the “real.” We
will explore experiments in ethnographic research and writing
that play between truth and representation, translation and
creation, and with the emergence of new languages and worlds in
the stories we tell and write as ethnographers, artists, and
performers. These experiments will allow us to explore ways of
decolonizing scholarship in a broader sense. In anthropology,
scholars have initially emphasized the importance of reclaiming
our interlocutors as intellectuals with stories, voices, and
theories of their own. This project has created new methods
across disciplines that enable new engagements with worlds and
challenge the usually unquestioned form of single-authored
writing and the centrality of written text. This seminar is a
cross pollinations between anthropology and the arts and explores
different forms of collaboration.
We will ask questions such as: What does it mean to document,
describe, analyze, and critique when we work at the threshold of
the “real” and the imaginary? What is a “documentary,” and what
relations does it bear to fiction and poetry? What is an
“experiment,” and what does it mean to experiment with forms of
rendering “reality”? How can we decenter text as a way of writing
the empirical, all the while working with words and transcripts,
archives and stories? What kinds of collaborations can we create
among different forms, interlocutors, sites, genres, practices,
and materials? How do we move from our ethnographic,
archival, visual, and sonic research material into a text, film,
installation, or performance?
This seminar is intended for graduate students engaging in the
task of textual and non-textual representation and creation,
whether they are writing papers, dissertations, preparing to do
fieldwork, making performances, and other artistic practices. The
seminar has three components:
1) Readings and discussions; 2) Writing
workshops where participants share drafts of their
writings/creations and reflect on their processes of
experimentation; 3) some embodied practice. Each seminar
meeting is organized around practices to revitalize our relation
to our respective empirical material, engagement with theory, and
creating our own texts. We will conduct collaborative experiments
with form and content.
PFS 265D Theory of Performance Studies: The Story With
Story: Learning from Doc Praxis Now, Prof. Julie Wyman,
(T 1:10 – 4pm, Art Annex Seminar Room, CRN 45688)
This seminar will consider – and creatively engage with – the
limitations of story, and the possibilities of media work that
eschews or resides beyond or outside of story. We will hone media
production skills while engaging in a series of creative
experiments and interventions. The course is anchored by the
online
community “Beyond Story” manifesto (Alexandra Juhasz
and Alisa Lebow, 2018) and extends into a close reading of the
Spring 2021
V5 World Records journal issue, including live conversations
with a selection of its authors, viewings of related media works,
and creative responses to the idea of “Beyond Story.”
EVH 200 Environmental Humanities
Elizabeth Miller and Louis Warren (W 12:10 PM – 3:00 PM
Voorhies 120 CRN 45365)
EVH200 is the core seminar for graduate students from various
disciplinary backgrounds in the humanities and beyond with an
interest in pursuing the new Designated
Emphasis (DE) in Environmental Humanities. The seminar
will introduce participants to key issues, themes, questions, and
debates in the field through discussions of classic and
contemporary readings in the main fields that have contributed to
environmental humanities scholarship. In addition to close
engagement with specific texts, emphasis will be placed on
high-level understanding of the history of the field and the
interrelationships between its various elements and on the most
significant questions in current research. By the end of the
seminar, students will be able to situate any environmental
humanities project in its historical, aesthetic, and ideological
contexts, and to understand how environmental scholarship in
their home disciplines connect to work carried on in other
fields. Students will also be introduced to the institutional
infrastructure of the environmental humanities, including
university programs, journals, academic presses, and professional
organizations, and to key pedagogical modes such as field
teaching.
Classic and contemporary readings in environmental history,
eco-criticism, environmental philosophy and ethics, geography,
design, cultural anthropology, cultural studies, eco-arts, and
other fields that make up the environmental humanities.
ANT 206 Research Methods of Social Anthropology,
Smriti Srinivas (R 12:10pm – 3:00pm Young Hall 224 CRN 45200)
Formulation of research problems and preparation of research
proposals; relationships between theory and method, funding,
pre-fieldwork preparations, entering the community, field
research techniques, and problems of ethics; intensive work on
proposal writing.
DES 222 Research Methods and Critical Writing for
Design, James Housefield (4 units, Seminar – 3
hours CRN 18982)
Independent study. Prerequisite(s): DES 221 and graduate standing
in Design or consent of instructor. Focused on research methods
and critical writing related to design topics, including case
studies, original and secondary sources, and critical reviews.
Course expectations include a substantial weekly reading and
writing workload including engagement with advanced critical and
theoretical works, and completion of a paper meeting professional
standards, suitable for publication, at the end of the
course. PFS or other graduate students wishing to enroll
should petition Professor James Housefield with a brief letter
detailing their interests, focusing on the relation of their work
to the field of Design, and an accompanying current CV. Admission
to the course will be contingent upon space available and the
specific relevance of the petitioning students’ needs. Write
to jehousefield@ucdavis.edu
ENG 287 Topics in Literature and Media: Money as
Medium, Stephanie Boluk (T R 12:10 – 3:00pm 120
Voorhies, CRN 23675)
Is money one of the first forms of digital media? Or, even more
simply, what is money? How do transformations in media affect the
way money operates? Since the 2008 financial crisis, the socially
constructed and unstable status of money has become even less
self-evident than it once pretended to be. From cryptocurrencies
like Bitcoin to virtual commodities like Counter-Strike gunskins
to NFTs recent experiments with money are calling into question
this symbolic form of communication. In order to better
understand the materiality and effects of money, this course will
undertake a survey of the various historical technologies of
currency, from ancient coins and paper banknotes to ultrafast
algorithmic trading, crowdfunding, and alternative currencies.
How do changes in the money form shape transformations in
perception (fetishism, visuality, attention economies), shifts in
the built environment (gentrification, the slum, digital spaces,
and augmented realities), and spark geopolitical conflicts
(colonialism, racism, imperialism, rentier capitalism)? In
conjunction with broader historical and theoretical readings on
money, we look at some contemporary cases that examine the
relationship between computation and finance.
Assignments: 15-20 page paper or comparable project,
participation + presentation in class
WMS 201 001 Special Topics: The Settler Colonial
Question, Beenash Jafri (R 2:10pm – 5:00pm Hart
Hall 1208, CRN 44197)
Explores in depth a topic in feminist theory and research related
to the research interests of the instructor.
Fall 2021
PFS 200Methods & Materials in Theatre
Research, Lynette Hunter M 2-5pm, crn 44988
Description TBD.
STS 200 Theories and Methods, Colin Milburn (T 9
– 11:50, CRN 51451)
Description TBD.
DRA 254 -Margaret Kemp
Description TBD.
CRI 200A – Kris Fallon
Description TBD.
DES 221 – Simon Sadler
Description TBD.
ANT 201 – Tarik Elhaik
Description TBD.
SOC 225 – Laura Grindstaff
Description TBD.
MUS 221 – Beth Levy
Description TBD.
NAS 254 – Inez Hernandez-Avila
Description TBD.
NAS 233 – Halleah Tsinhnahjinnie
Description TBD.
NAS 200 – Jessica Perea
Description TBD.
Spring 2021
MUS 223 - Topics
in Ethnomusicology: Music and Missionaries, Henry
Spiller,(CRN 62179), T 9:00-11:50 via ZOOM
Description TBD.
NAS 224 /PFS
265C - Performance in the
Americas, Zoila Mendoza, (W, 2:10 – 5:00pm, CRN
62446)
PFS 200 – Methods and Materials in Theatre
Research, Lynette Hunter
Description TBD.
Spring 2015
PFS 265B – Signification and Body, Maxine
Craig
Description TBD.
Winter 2015
PFS 265A – Modes of Production, Lynette
Hunter
Description TBD.
PFS 259 – Contemporary Performance, Larry
Bogad
Description TBD.
Abstracts
SPRING 2021
Music 223 Topics in
Ethnomusicology, Professor: Henry Spiller
(hjspiller@ucdavis.edu)
Topic: Music and Missionaries (CRN 62179)
Syllabus: Spring 2021, T 9:00-11:50 am, via Zoom
Course Description and Objectives: In this seminar we will
explore (1) the role(s) that music has played
in missionizing various religious belief systems
(Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, among others), and (2) the
various role(s) missionaries have played in
documenting, modifying, eliminating, and/or preserving the
indigenous musical practices they encountered.
In addition to shared class activities, each participant
will develop an individual research project on a topic of
their choice that expands on some of the concepts
discussed in the seminar and will present the results of
this research in both a term paper and in a public
presentation.
WINTER 2021
PFS 265A Lynette Hunter
DRA 253 / PFS 259) Approaches to
Collaboration/Performance of Non-Fiction, Larry Bogad (T
1-4pm)
Description: An exploration of different approaches to
collaboration among artists in different media and their
influence on the creative process. This is a practical
performance workshop class, emphasizing the creation of original
performances based on non-fictional texts. These can range
from newspaper articles, historical primary sources, declassified
government documents, eyewitness accounts, lists of chemical
ingredients, instructional manuals, etc. Students should
choose a subject matter that ignites their passion/anger/sense of
humor and explore it widely and deeply. Students will advance
their work through weekly five-minute performances (“challenge
performances”) based on a weekly challenge/theme. *Students
support each other in the creation of their pieces; each student
will create a piece that they are responsible for, but with the
collaborative support of at least one other student. This
ideally will be self-organized within the community of the group,
but if need be, we can create a structure/graph for this in
class. Students will present them to the class and exchange
constructive suggestions/feedback. We may change or add to
the challenges listed in the syllabus depending on the progress
or passions of the class. Feel free to interpret the challenges
wildly or bizarrely—but do address them.
This graduate seminar focuses on textuality in the context of
music performance. It addresses questions such as, where is or
what is the text when we shift focus from written texts to
performance? Is performance reading, quoting, paraphrasing or
rewriting? How do we understand the interaction among authors,
performers, and audiences? How does the medium or venue of
performance change the meaning or perception of the text?
Students will read and discuss essays in the fields of
philosophy, literary theory, performance studies, and musicology.
We will explore a variety of samples from early music, addressing
the concept of ‘authenticity’, opera, addressing theatricality
and movement as part of the ‘text’, and jazz, addressing
collaborative authorship and improvisation. We will explore
methods and ideas on how to describe, transcribe, and analyze
performing-arts events in their multi-media complexity involving
interaction in sound production and movement. Students who will
take this seminar in tandem with Professor Diaz’s class on
transcription in ethnomusicology are encouraged to produce one
single final project, engaging with both professors and seminar
groups. The ability to read and analyze music is not a
prerequisite. The final outcome can be a traditional scholarly
paper or a sample of research through practice, possibly
combining text and performance.
MUS 223 Topics in Ethnomusicology: Transcription of
Music and Dance Prof:Juan Diego Diaz (Music)
This course is concerned with musical and dance transcription,
that is, the graphic representation of musical sound and its
associated dance practices. Transcription is a tool that has
served musicians, dancers, scholars, and educators from different
cultures and periods to deepen their understanding of music and
dance, facilitate the creative process, and communicate and
reinforce their reflections and analyses. Music and dance
scholars, especially ethnomusicologists and choreomusicologists,
routinely use transcription to notate and analyze the musical and
dance practices they study, which frequently come from oral
traditions or lack available scores. In doing, so they may adapt
methods held to be universal such as Western staff
notation or the Laban method, culture-specific methods such as
Korean Jeongganbo, or propose their own. // What
is gained and lost when we transcribe music and dance from oral
traditions? What are the ethical dimensions of this practice?
What notational systems are more appropriate for certain kinds of
analyses or repertoires? How can the analytical exercise of
transcription work in tandem with other forms of analysis such as
historical or discourse analysis? What is gained when we examine
music and dance as an inseparable unit? // This seminar is
primarily geared towards graduate students in music, dance, and
performance studies and secondarily to students from other
departments who are interested in musical and dance traditions.
(Please notice that students from outside the Music Department
are NOT required to know any notational method beforehand.) In
the seminar students will improve or develop their transcription
skills, analyze music and dance from a variety of performance
traditions from around the world, read and discuss scholarship
about transcription, learn, apply, and critique existing
transcription techniques, and ideally develop their own
methodologies and notational systems. During weekly workshop-like
meetings, the class will comment on and constructively critique
each other’s transcriptions, interact with guests who have
developed their own notational solutions, and contextualize their
discussions with academic readings. Students will also complete a
large-scale final essay (a transcription and prose analysis of an
audio visual recording, chosen in consultation with the
instructor) and present their findings to the class in a
conference format. // Students who will take this seminar in
tandem with Professor Polzonetti’s seminar Music
Interactions: Texts, Contexts, Performance, are encouraged
to produce one single final project, engaging with both seminars
at once.
FALL 2020
ANT 210 / PFS 265B Feminist and Decolonial Technoscience
Studies: Another University is Possible
This course looks to Feminist, Black, and Indigenous
technoscience studies efforts to imagine other ways of knowing,
being, researching, and learning. It takes a desire-based
approach, asking, what kind of university, what kinds of
knowledges does one want to cultivate when engaging with
technoscience. Since this class is within the university, we take
up the question of what possibilities for cultivating more
justice relations and recognizing many worlds are possible here,
now, without deferring to a better moment. The class will
emphasize readings and responses to readings that take up this
task, but will also be committed to playing and experimenting
with the format of the classroom and online platforms in this
moment when we are assembling virtually together during
challenging times. What can our class do in its practices to
conjure another university? What otherwise possibilities
are already here?
An aspiration and struggle of the course is to think and write
for desired futures and tactically for surviving in the present.
This is a two university course between WGS1004 at the University
of Toronto taught by Prof Murphy and ANT210 at University of
California Davis taught by Prof. Dumit. Our two universities have
different start times and that is reflected in the
schedule. We are excited to be thinking across places and
disciplines about this course.
SPRING 2020
MUS 221 Topics in Music History: Music in
California, Beth Levy
Course Description: This course explores the diversity of music
making in California, including Bay Area and Los Angeles
institutions, as well as some local history. While most of
our readings will treat classical, jazz, and film music and
institutions from the 20th century, students may select from any
genre or time period for their individual projects, which will
culminate in final presentations during the last week(s) of the
quarter.
FALL 2019
CRI 200C
Course Description: This course traces the relationship of
technological inventions such as the camera, the gramophone, and
the Turing machine to human perception. It explores how
emerging media disrupt sense perceptions, creating doubles, forms
of re-animation of the dead, memories, or historical events, and
specters and ghosts in the machine. We will analyze the impact of
the ghostly on the social imaginary and modes of communication.
Course assignments require students to analyze audiovisual media
and make critical arguments about them.
AHI 200A
Course Description: Close study of selected recent developments
in interpretive methodology used by art historians and other
analysts of visual culture and the place of those developments
within art history’s history and in the larger field of social,
cultural and historical analysis.
STS 200 Colin Milburn
Course Description: This graduate seminar focuses on theories and
methods in science and technology studies (STS). Students
will be introduced to major authors, works, and movements
that have shaped the interdisciplinary field of STS,
attending to intersections of the history and philosophy of
science, the anthropology and sociology of science, and literary
and cultural studies of science. Students will gain a strong
foundation in a variety of STS approaches and concepts:
constructivism; sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK);
actor-network theory; gender studies of science; rhetoric
and semiotics of scientific writing; scientific trading
zones; experimental systems; and others. The seminar is
designed for graduate students interested in adding STS
methods to their scholarly toolkits.
This course focuses on historical and contemporary philosophical,
theoretical, and practical perspectives related to experiential
learning in formal and non-formal settings. The course is
targeted at those who are interested in how to design experiences
that promote affective, psychomotor, and cognitive learning.
Specifically, the course is designed for those who are interested
in designing authentic learning experiences for school aged and
adult learners in such settings as: environmental outdoor camps,
Farmer Field Schools, science museums, short and long term
agricultural extension trainings, and K-12 classrooms.
After reviewing the philosophical and theoretical
foundations of experiential learning, student in this course will
design, develop, and teach experienced-rich lessons related to
their interests to others in the course.
Cary Trexler worked as a high school agriculture, biology and
health teacher in California and Vermont early in his career.
He also served as a school administrator in Michigan for an
elementary science education program that used food, agriculture,
renewable resources, and the environment as a context for
instruction. Cary also has extensive experience working in
international development contexts designing and implementing
agricultural and environmental extension programs that engage
people in experiences that promote behavioral change.
SOC 295 Buy-ology: Culture, Environment and the Sociology
of Consumption, Rafi Grosglik, (W 9:00 – 11:50 AM,
Soc.Humanities Rm 1291)
This course explores the ways in which consumption was formed as
a major source of identity and citizenship, and as a driving
force of global, local and national politics and economies. We
will analyze the appearance and development of consumer
society(ies), namely the social spheres in which the accumulation
of material goods has become extremely important for individuals
and the larger culture. A general aim of this course is to
facilitate students’ grasp of how major works in sociology of
consumption and material culture can help us think about the
conceptualization and analysis of notions such as: consumer
culture, ethical consumption, global commodity chain, the social
life of things, cultural consumption, shared economy, green
consumption and anti-consumption. The course will begin by
offering a theoretical overview of the relationship between
social structure and consumption patterns. Following that, we
will consider sociological critiques of global capitalist
production. Through engagement with theories of sociology of
consumption, we will ask what role consumerism plays in the
societies from both the Global North and the Global South. We
will learn how possession of goods, commodities and technologies
intersect with class, gender, ethnic and national hierarchies,
desires and values. Next, we will discuss how social inequality
and environmental problems might be related to consumption. We
will also consider the ethics and politics surrounding
consumption patterns and examine issues related to consumer
activism and ethical consumption. Goals and Aims: A major aim of
this course is to facilitate the efforts of graduate students in
sociology (as well as geography, environmental studies,
anthropology or, indeed, any field) who are interested in
critical engagement in studies of consumption and material
culture. The course also has a more practical aim – to help
graduate students make progress toward their immediate goals,
including: preparing for qualifying exams and advancing their own
research. To this end, as a final assignment, students will write
a synthetic essay on a topic of their choosing. Graduate students
in this course will be encouraged to take an active part in a
one-day symposium on Wednesday, April 26th at UC Davis on
markets, movements and the politics of commodities.
This seminar focuses on several key theoretically-informed
questions in medical sociology, including: what are the dynamics
of domination and power in the social field of healthcare? How is
medicalization a form of social control? How are racial, gender,
or class disparities reproduced or challenged in health-related
policies and practices? How do illness experiences affect
individuals’ – and their caretakers’ – identities?
We start with an investigation of the macro-historical contexts
in which medicine achieved professional dominance in the US and,
subsequently, healthcare became an expanding network of
market-driven industry. We continue our discussion of macro
forces of domination as we examine the regulatory power of the
“medical gaze.” We then shift our attention to how meso-level
social forces, in particular race, class, ethnicity, and gender,
produce and reproduce health disparities, as these factors
influence access to care, individuals’ social environment and
“habitus,” doctor-patient interactions, etc. Also relevant here
is the question of how and why the workforce of healthcare itself
is stratified. We finish the quarter with an analysis of how
individuals experience and narrate their health problems outside
of the clinic – in their lifeworlds and with their own voices.
Both as patients and caregivers, women and men endeavor to draw
upon elements from their cultural repertoires to construct
narratives about their (or their spouses’ or children’s) health
problems – narratives that help them to make sense of how the
illness is interrupting their identities and how they envision
their future social selves.
Two groups of graduate students can potentially benefit from this
course: those who are interested in medical
sociology/anthropology and the sociology of health and illness,
and the students who do not self-identify as medical sociologists
but are interested in exploring the theoretical issues raised in
the seminar.
PFS 265D Queer Performance: Histories and
Theories, Elizabeth Freeman, Th 3:10 – 6, 308 Voorhies.
This course will sample a broad historical range of performance
traditions that might conceivably be called “queer”:
cross-dressing on the Early Modern English stage; 19th century
minstrelsy; early 20th century Harlem cabaret; 1950s camp; 1980s
vogue/ballroom culture; late 20th century trans* beauty pageants,
2000s karaoke, and global contemporary transgender performance.
We will look at these performance traditions through
primary works of literature, film, and performance recording,
alongside of critical readings that analyze the traditions
themselves in terms of queer performance theory, and/or alongside
of more general explorations of queer performance and
performativity theory. Students will present an “embodied
critical act” of one reading once during the quarter, and may
choose either a traditional final paper or a performance project
with an accompanying analytic piece of writing explaining their
performance and its relation to course materials. Readings TBA,
as this course was reassigned to this instructor only very
recently, but critics/theorists are likely to include Judith
Butler, Joshua Chambers-Letson, Eric Lott, Martin Manalansan,
José Esteban Muñoz, Esther Newton, Marcia Ochoa, Eve Sedgwick,
and others.
WINTER 2019
PFS 265C Performance and Society Fiamma
Montezemolo, (M 3-6pm Della)
In this seminar we will try to answer a series of key questions
revolving around the relation between Performance and Society,
with a special focus on the second term and its actual or
in/actual conceptual relevance. What is a ‘society’? Is the
‘social’ something given, inalterable, contingent, tangible? What
are those activities that are deemed to have a ‘social
dimension’? Is the Social something that has kept its intrinsic
meaning unchanged over time? Is the social a dimension
exclusively pertaining to the human? And can society be
‘defended’? How is society related to politics and control?
Moreover, what is the relation between society and community? We
will attempt to engage these questions through a series of key
texts by T.Bender, M.Foucault, G.Deleuze, A.Mbembe, C.Bishop,
T.Rees, B.Latour, N.Rose, S.O’Sullivan as well as artists case
studies including Teresa Margolles, Tania Bruguera, Pierre
Huyghe, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and the collective Postcommodity.
STS 250 Faciality K. Ravetto-Biagioli, (T
12:10-3:00 CRN 55382)
With the invention of photography, cinema, and computational
media the face has come to signify intensity and power (Deleuze),
the bearing of the soul (Balasz), individuality (Lacan), truth,
beauty, ideas (Barthes), and interiority as well as the most
basic support of intersubjectivity (Levinas). Yet contemporary
facial technologies allow us to inhabit other people’s faces and
to modify our own. This course will examine the how the history
of perception has been entangled with the image (eidolon) of the
face, haptics (Descartes), and the neural processing of emotions,
examining how the face came to be considered the interface
between reception and expression. The course will consider how
optical and visual technologies have transformed the way we think
about and interact with the face. Readings from Plato, Kepler,
Descartes, Darwin, Galton, Duchenne, Münsterberg, Balasz,
Levinas, Flusser, Ekman, Deleuze and Guattari, Doane, Steimatzky,
Gates, Galloway, Pearl, etc.
German 297 Life Writing Graphic Novels and the
Holocost, Elizabeth Kramer (T 2:10-5pm, 109 Olson
Hall CRN 37017)
This course examines the genre of life writing in the context of
the Holocaust with particular attention to graphic novels. We
will discuss texts on the genre of life writing (Thomas Couser),
on the representation of the Holocaust (James Young), on the
Holocaust and gender (Marianne Hirsch), and on graphic novels
(McCloud). Texts to be discussed include Ruth Klüger’s Still
Alive, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Miriam Katin’s Letting It Go,
Barbara Yelin’s Irmina, and Nora Krug’s Heimat. Knowledge of
German not required. All texts are available in English.
MUS 223 Topics in Ethnomusicology: Music and (Bodily)
Movement Henry Spiller, (1:10 - 4:00 pm,
Everson 266)
The modernist category of “music” is a disembodied thing–purely
aural and mental, curiously disconnected from the gestural and
physical phenomena that invariably accompany its sounds. This
seminar explores approaches for examining how music encompasses
human bodily movements. Through readings and discussions (and
even occasional in-class moving) we will interrogate the
conceptual boundaries erected between movement and music, explore
the role of physical gestures in creating music, look at ways in
which music suggests gestures, and examine how (disembodied)
music accompanies aestheticized movement forms such as dance,
marching, martial arts, film/video, and even (if somebody
insists) synchronized swimming.
This is a graduate level fiction writing workshop. Priority is
given to graduate students in creative writing. Students from
other programs are welcome, space permitting, and interested
students should send a writing sample (fiction) when requesting
permission to enroll. My approach privileges intensity and
awareness of language textures and narrative shape, and asks each
student to make each new work press the boundaries (intellectual,
emotional, formal) of previous work. Making an immaculate-feeling
piece of art is the ultimate goal, and we will work toward making
your stories as beautiful as they can be, but I am less
interested in you crafting pieces that conform to an “ideal form”
than I am in you challenging yourself artistically. Revision is
essential to this challenge. You are expected, therefore, to
engage in revision, not in order to be “done” with a work, but to
deepen and push at a work. Consistent, thorough attention to peer
fictions both in writing and in discussion is required. This
quarter we’ll compile a reader of short fictions that includes
some drawn from enrolled students’ recent reading practices.
We’ll also read a couple of short novels. Right now I’m thinking
we’ll read Mary Robison’s /Why Did I Ever/ and Horacio
Castellanos Moya’s /The Dream of My Return/.
FALL 2018
CST 210 / HMR 200B Memory, Culture, and Human
Rights, Professor Lazzara (Hart Hall 3114,
Wednesdays 1:10-4 pm CRN 43098 / CRN 43145)
Although “memory” has been a topic for intellectual reflection
since classical antiquity, it has experienced an upsurge in
academia since the 1980s, particularly due to the rise of
Holocaust Studies and the urgent need to reflect on gross human
rights violations around the world. Crossing the social sciences
and humanities, memory has become a category for critical inquiry
as well as a political and ethical imperative that links
intellectual reflection to political activism in the aftermath of
authoritarian regimes, genocide, and situations of violence.
Furthermore, “memory studies” now find spaces of institutional
legitimacy in the U.S. and abroad as master’s programs and
specialized journals promote scholarship in this area.
What are memory studies? An autonomous field, a space of
inquiry that permits certain kinds of interdisciplinary work?
What kinds of work can be done within the rubric of memory
studies? What are the limits, drawbacks, and untapped potential
of this framework? This course looks at the productivity of
“memory” as a lens through which to do cultural studies work; in
so doing, it explores the multiple convergences among memory,
culture, and human rights. We will discuss how societal actors in
different historical, cultural, and national settings construct
meanings of past political violence, inter-group conflicts, and
human rights struggles. We will also work to acquire the critical
vocabulary that scholars working in this area regularly use.
Readings will mostly be theoretical or conceptual in nature,
although we will also discuss a few “primary” texts derived
largely from Latin America, an area in which memory studies have
firmly taken root. Given the limited time we have in the seminar,
primary texts will touch on the literary genres of fiction and
testimony, although students are welcome to engage with other
cultural objects—film, music, memorials, etc.—in their individual
projects. Additionally, seminar participants will be encouraged
to draw parallels to other contexts and geographies that are
relevant to their individual research programs.
Comparative Literature 210 Section 001 Chinese
Cinema Sheldon Lu (R 2:10-5:00P 3 Wellman Hall CRN
16710)
This quarter we focus on the rich cinematic traditions of China.
We begin with early Chinese cinema and move all the way to the
twenty-first century. Students will explore the themes, styles,
aesthetics, stars, and socio-political contexts of particular
films as well as the evolution of entire film industries.
Representative directors and internationally renowned filmmakers
will be discussed, such as Xie Jin, Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Ang
Lee, Jiang Wen, Feng Xiaogang, and Jia Zhangke. We examine
Chinese cinema as an outgrowth of indigenous, national roots as
well as a necessary response to international film culture. We
look at how films engage in social critique and cultural
reflection, and how film artists react to the conditions and
forces of socialist politics, capitalist economy, tradition,
modernization, and globalization in Chinese-speaking regions.
Companion course to COM 180 for graduate students. Prerequisite:
Graduate standing in Comparative Literature, English, or a
foreign-language literature, or consent of instructor
(shlu@ucdavis.edu).
PFS 298 Critical and Creative Embodiment: Practicing
Research and Researching Practice (T 2-5p CRN:
34659)
As an anthropologist who studies the practice of research, I am
very interested in “Practice as Research” (a term used in dance,
art and performance work), “Research Creation” (in Canada and
other places for the arts), and in general treating research as
practice, and all practice as a type of research. Attending to
practice indicates habits, sensitization, bodies, affects,
embodiments, etc. Therefore my focus this fall is on how we
practice (whoever joins the group is “we”) and whether that is
the same as how we research (why, why not). One of the goals is
that each of us learns more about what we do, and another is
learning more how to talk about what we do, in terms of that are
legible to others (for our future selves, for grants, for
articles, and for collaborations).
There will be small readings each week to press upon these
concepts and weekly practice and writing work – I really do
believe that each style of writing (including academic) is a
skill that gets better through practice and feedback.
Currently the class is scheduled for Tuesdays 2-5p. (I also have
a slot Wed 12-3p that is possible). You sign up for it with the
CRN 34659 – and let me know too so I can try to keep track.
You have choose the credits and ideally you treat it as a
4-credit course.
