Instructor: J. Peters
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor.
(Seminar). European Drama, Spectacle, and Visual Culture of the 18th and 19th Centuries: Enlightenment, Revolution, Romanticism, and the Modern Self.
The invention of the modern self and the modern culture of spectacle in relation to (and in agonistic struggle with) the political and social upheavals of the 18th and 19th centuries. European drama, performance, and visual culture (revolutionary street theatre, the fairground, boulevard, and puppet show, the birth of the circus and the zoo, the rise of celebrity culture, the rise of advertising, automatons, panoramas, and other forms of proto-cinema, opera, commedia dell’arte, melodrama, romantic spectacle, the social problem play, etc.) as the backdrop for thinking about revolution as performance, the human and the animal, acting and being, nature and nurture, passion and reason, the body and disembodied imagination, the real an the virtual, the commodity and the inalienable self (etc.), from the Enlightenment and the age of revolution, through the industrial revolution, to the brink of modernism.
Texts include visual images, contemporary documents, and films, as well as English, French, Italian, and German plays and operas; those that were the most influential for modern drama; and those that best capture the culture of popular spectacle during the period.
Application instructions:
Please e-mail Prof. Peters (peters@columbia.edu) by Wed Nov 25th with your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement of why you are interested in taking the course.
You will receive an email letting you know whether or not you have been admitted. (Feel free to register, but there is no relationship between registration and admission.) If you have not been officially admitted but are still interested in taking the course, please come to the first session (which you must attend if you wish to take the course.)
