Reading course sylabus

Graduate Program in Theatre Studies

Course Number: THST 6500A 3.0

Term: Fall

Credits: 3

Start Date/Completion Date: Sep. 1^st/Dec 1^st , 2008

Professor: Laura Levin

Student: Ofer Ravid

1. Proposed Course Title: Phenomenology and Theatre

2. Description: In recent years phenomenology has increasingly become an important approach in the study and analysis of theatre and performance. This course will serve as a platform to explore phenomenology and the ways in which it is used in theatre research. The first part of the course will focus on the core writings of some of the most important phenomenological theorists—namely Husserl, Heideger, and Merleau-Ponty. The second part of the course will explore the way phenomenology has been used in theatre and performance studies.

3. Previous courses taken: THST 6100 Methods of Research, THST 6200 Canadian Theatre History, THST 5020 Performance and Culture, THST 5021 Theories of Praxis, THST 6500 Independent Study: Theories of Embodiment in Performance

4. Future courses you plan to take: This course completes my credits requirement.

5. Objective: Phenomenology is the main theoretical methodology I will use in my dissertation research. There is currently no course offered in phenomenology and theatre. This course will deepen my understanding of phenomenology as a theory in itself and, more specifically, as an approach for research in theatre and performance studies. In addition, it will assist me in preparing for my comprehensive exam as well as for my research.

6. Assignment breakdown:

Assignment Title Percent of Grade

Blog entries 40%

Oral Presentations 20%

Final paper 40%

7. Assignment description:

The blog entry for each one of the readings will consist of: a critical analysis of the reading, its context within larger critical arguments, its theoretical implications and key passages from the reading.

Oral Presentations will be delivered by phone at the end of each month. The presentations will synthesize readings and reflect on their relation to the larger dissertation project.

The final paper will be an extensive annotated bibliography. Each annotation will be at least 500 words in length, and the bibliography will be 20-25 pages.

8. Bibliography

Farleigh, Sondra. “A Vulnerable Glance: Seeing Dance through Phenomenology.” Dance Research Journal, 23.1, (1991): 11-16.

Garner, Stanton B. Jr. Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1994.

Heidegger, Martin. “The Age of the World Picture”. In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. NewYork: Harper & Row, 1977.

---. “The Fundamental Discoveries of Phenomenology, its Principle, and the Clarification of its Name.” In Moran, Dermot and Timothy Mooney eds. The Phenomenology Reader. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Husserl, Edmund. “Material Things in Their Relation to the Aesthetic Body.” And “The Constitution of Psychic Reality through the Body.” In Don, Welton (ed.) The Body: Classic and Conte,porary Readings. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.

Jones, Amelia. Body/Art: Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962.

---. The Visible and the Invisible. Ed. Claude Lefort. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1968

Moran, Dermot and Timothy Mooney eds. The Phenomenology Reader. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Rayner, Alice. Ghosts: Death's Double and the Phenomena of Theatre. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota P., 2006.

States, Bert O. Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theater. Berkeley: U. of California P., 1985.

---. “The Phenomenological Attitude.” Critical Theory and Performance. Eds. Reinalt, Janelle G. and Joseph Roach, Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan P., 1992: 369-379.

Wilshire, Bruce. Role Playing and Identity: The Limits of Theatre as Metaphor. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982.

Young, Iris Marion. On Female Body Experience: "Throwing Like a Girl" and Other Essays. New York: Oxford UP, 2005.

Zarrilli, Phillip B. "Toward a Phenomenological Model of the Actor's Embodied Modes of Experience." Theatre Journal 56.4 (2004): 653-66.

9. Frequency of meeting with course supervisor: Most communication will be through the blog with weekly entries and responses on each of the readings accompanied by email. Live discussions and oral presentations will take place at the end of each month by phone.