GWS 200B QUEER PERFORMANCE

This course focuses on performance as queer, and queerness through performance. How do the aesthetic and liminal space of performance, performativity, the performance text, and the immediacy of the body converge to produce and reevaluate queerness? We will look at performance through the lenses of autobiography, technology, ritual, and the post-human to better understand how performance can be a political, even utopian space to explore queerness. Theorists will include Jill Dolan, Donna Haraway, Amelia Jones, Jose Muñoz, Lisa Nakamura, Peggy Phelan, Elaine Scarry, and Susan Sontag; performance case studies will include Reza Abdoh, Laurie Anderson, Becca Blackwell, Justin Vivian Bond, Kate Bornstein, Karen Finley, Joan Jonas, Shigeku Kubota, Taylor Mac, Ana Mendieta, Tim Miller, Carolee Schneeman, Split Britches, Annie Sprinkle, Ron Vawter, and Andy Warhol.