How is ideology transmitted as performance? This course explores that question by examining a series of performances and performance genres developed and disseminated in mid-twentieth-century Europe, and by contextualizing them within a number of theoretical perspectives. The main focus of the seminar is on the 1930s and 1940s in both the Third Reich and the Eastern Bloc. The seminar will take in a wide range of “performances,” including both those marked as aesthetic (theatre, film, art exhibitions), as well as considering the politically motivated aesthetics of trials, political rallies, the performance of race and of progress, and of course the cult of staging political leaders like Hitler and Stalin as well. In the course of the semester, students will read widely in the literature of political and performance theory, as well as engaging with a range of primary materials: films, documentaries, plays, newsreels, mass spectacles, dance, etc.
The Heyman Center for the Humanities, Room B-101
74 Morningside Drive
New York, NY, 10027
(212) 854-4541
(212) 854-3099
