Witnessing, Speaking, and Performing: African American Women Playwrights
Theatre 393
Tues/Th. 2:30-3:50
136 Art
Dr Paul Bryant- Jackson, Director of Graduate Studies
Professor of Theatre
Course Description
In this course we will critically examine African American Experience(s) through the dramas/theatresof African American women playwrights, from the early 1900s to the present, from Angelina Grimke’s shattering pioneering work, Rachel to recent works of Lydia Diamond and Katori HallWe we will engage critical essays and other mediums, such as film and music, as catalysts to look in-depth at the intersections of identities: race, class, gender, sexuality. We wil engage the intersectionalities of these factors of identity alongside other cultural issues related to human and societal relations and realities. The texts in this course will utilize basic methods of interdisciplinary analysis and interpretation to examine the ways in which these African American women dramatists construct and/or contest the cultural, ideological, and political parameters of race, gender, and other issues surrounding identity. Topics include African American women’s rights, African American feminist/Womanist movements, political and social institutions, self-identity and social status, and issues related to changing social structures. Topics of discussion can include narrative and dramaturgical strategies, modes of representation, and intersections of identity (race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, class, and generation). In addition to exploring both broad and narrowed themes, we will also engage in activities to improve skills in critical thinking, writing, and the presentation of ideas. These activities can include written or performed texts,bringing individual personal, discipline–specific, and, of course, theatre foci to the course. In order to organize our investigations, I have decided to divide our inquiry into the following sections:
- Emergence of an African American Woman Aesthetic
- Women of the Civil Rights & Black Power Movements
- Redefining African American Theatre: Black Feminism & Womanism
- Postmodern Performances: Questioning Identity, Authenticity, and History
Acknowledgement Dr. Jackson acknowledges the work of Khalid Long, MA, and Ph.D. student at the university of Maryland for his assistance in the preparation of this syllabus.
Course Goals
•To become familiar with the drama and performance that reflects the African American experience from the perspective of African American women playwrights.
•Develop an appreciation of African American Theatre and Performance by means of witnessing to, speaking of and participating in African American Theatre and Performance.
•To become familiar with non-linear, post-modern representational forms and explore their uses within African American theatre and performance.
•To understand how drama, films, and other texts can (and ultimately do) reflect race, gender, class and sexuality positions within a context of cultural diversity.
•To become familiar with critical/theoretical/historical understandings of race, gender, and ethnicity as conceptually and socially constructed categories as seen through a variety of texts.
•To develop a vocabulary for analyzing, discussing, and writing about representations of difference.
•To engage in critical, close reading of dramatic, theoretical, and cultural texts, making arguments using textual citation as evidence.
•To engage, in a variety of ways, the performance of these texts.
Learning Objectives
• Understand the complexity of texts — how texts hold multiple meanings and produce multiple effects depending on audience, context, and methodological approach or perspective.
• Conduct research-based inquiries into the rhetorical, literary, historical, and/or cultural contexts of a particular text or group of texts, employing both literary and performance methods for invention, analysis, and argument.
• Write effectively for specific audiences, purposes, and contexts, especially for academic contexts and disciplinary audiences.
• Locate, evaluate, integrate, and cite sources effectively and ethically.
•To improve skills in critical thinking, writing, and presenting ideas.
Grading Scale and Course Policies
The grading scale is as follows:
A 100-94%
A- 93-90%
B+ 89-87%
B 86-84%
B- 83-80%
C+ 79-77%
C 76-74%
C- 73-70%
D+ 69-67%
D 66-64%
D- 63-60%
F 59% and below
Assignments
Quizzes (10) at 15points each150 points
Midterm200 points
Final 200 points
Paper 12 pp300 points
Crumbs Essay100 points
In-class assignment 50 points
Total1000
All assignments should be submitted on time. Late assignments will only be accepted at the discretion of the instructor.
Specific criteria for each major assignment will be explained and guidelines distributed in class.. However, all work you produce, whether written, performed, or spoken, should meet the following general criteria: (a) Meets the requirements and parameters for the assignment; (b) the work is intelligent, well-informed, respectful of others, grammatically competent and stylistically fluent, well organized, and, most importantly, rhetorically effective for its purpose, audience, and context.
Attendance and Class Participation: Both are mandatory and will be evaluated to determine 15% of each student's final grade. Attendance will be taken at the beginning of each class; students arriving late to class will be marked absent. Poor attendance will almost certainly result in a failing grade. Even a B grade point average can become a D if attendance, and thus class participation, are poor.
Policy on the Use of Personal Technology in the Classroom:
Students may not use personal technology devices in the classroom without the permission of the instructor. Such devices include mobile email devices, smartphones, mobile phones, iPODs, iPads, laptops and similar technologies. These items may be brought to class, but they may be taken out and used by students only with the instructor's specific direction to do so and for purposes of achieving the learning objectives of the course. Notes may be taken using paper and pen/pencil, and students may type (word-process) notes outside of class time if they wish to do so. All mobile phones must be turned off during class. Any student who fails to follow these guidelines will be asked to leave class. Exceptions will be made in the case of students who need personal technology devices in order to learn course content due to documented disabilities (e.g.: visual or auditory disabilities). The exception to this policy is when we are engaging an e resource.
Diversity Statement: In keeping with the "University Statement Asserting Respect for HumanDiversity," I offer the following as a foundation on which our work in this course will be built. As a group of diverse individuals with various backgrounds including those influenced by ethnicity, race, age, gender, physical abilities, religious and political beliefs, national origins, and sexual orientations, we will strive to learn from each other in an atmosphere of positive engagement and mutual respect. Bigotry, including racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, religious intolerance, and other forms of invidious prejudice will not go unchallenged.
Incompletes: Except in extenuating circumstances, incompletes will not be granted in this course. Failure to complete the assigned work or attendance problems does not constitute grounds for an incomplete. See the Miami University Student Handbook for regulations governing incompletes.
Disability: If you have a disability of any kind that affects your ability to work successfully in this course, please see me within the first two weeks of class. Your self-disclosure will enable me to make accommodations that will allow all
Academic Honesty: This course follows the policy outlined in the Miami Student Handbook, and Graduate Student Handbook
The professor reserves the right to make changes in the syllabus with notification.
Course Calendar (Subject to Change)
“Cooper and DuBois, Before and After: Developing an African American (Woman) Aesthetic”
Week 1 (January 27)
Introduction to materials scope of class-
General framing question: What are the purposes of theatre?
Kolin, “Introduction: The struggles and triumphs of staging gender and race in contemporary African American playwrights”
Week 2 (February 3) Angelina Grimke
Rachel, Angelina Grimke
A Sunday Morning in the South, Georgia Douglas Johnson
*Judith Stephens, Anti-Lynch Plays by African American Women: Race, Gender, and Social Protest in American Drama. (African American Review Vol26, No.2, Summer 1992
Week 3 (February 10)
*Harvey Young, “The Black Body as Souvenir in American Lynching” Theatre Journal vol.57 No. 4 Dec 2005
Krasner, David “Something’s going on down here that concerns me”: Johnson, Hurston Bonner and Hansberry in Kolin pp 9-27
“Women of the Civil Rights & (Global) Black Power Movements”
Week 4(February 10) Alice Childress/ Sonia Sanchez
Childress, Alice Wines in the WIiderness
Sanchez, Sonia Sister Sonji
Diggs-Colbert, Soyica “Dialectical dialogues: Performing blackness in the drama of Alice Childress” Kolin, p.28
Wood, Jacqueline“Shaking Loose”: Sonia Sanchez’s Militant drama” Kolin p.62
Week 5(February 17) Lorraine Hansberry
Hansbery, Lorraine Les Blancs
*African/American: Lorraine Hansberry's Les Blancs and the American Civil Rights Movement
Joy L. Abell
African American Review, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 459-470
*Wilkerson, Margaret B. Diverse Angles of Vision: Two Black Women Playwrights
Week 6(February 24) Lynn Nottage
Nottage, Lynn Crumbs from the Table of Joy
Shannon, Sandra G. “An intimate look at the plays of Lynn Nottage” in Kolin 167
Shannon, Sandra G. “An interview with Lynn Nottage”
Week 7(March 3) Adrienne Kennedy
*Bryant-Jackson and Overbeck Adrienne Kennedy: An Interview
*Bryant-Jackson “Kennedy’s Travelers in the American and African Continuum”
(more in the reader)
“Redefining African American Theatre: Black Feminism & Womanism”
Week 8 (March 10) Ntozake Shange
Shange, Ntozake for colored girls who have considered suicide…
Fisher, James “Boogie woogie landscapes”: The dramatic/poetic collage of Ntozake Shange in Kolin p. 83
*Anderson, Lisa “A Black Feminist Theatre Emerges”
Week 9 (March 17) Aishah Rahman
Rahman, Aisha, Unfinished Women Cry in no man’s land etc.
Catanese, Brandy “we must keep on writing”; The plays of Aishah Rahman” in Kolin p 115
Midterm
Week 10 (March 24) Spring Break
“Postmodern Performances: Questioning Identity, Authenticity, and History”
Week 11 (March 31) Pearl Cleage
Cleage, Pearl Flying West
Turner, Beth “The feminist/womanist vision of Pearl Cleage” in Kolin 99
Week 12 (April 7) Glenda Dickerson
Dickerson, Glenda The Aunt Jemima Traveling Menstrual Show
Giles, Freda Scott “Glenda Dickerson’s NuShe: Combining feminist discourse/pedagogy theatre” in Kolin 132
*Anderson, Lisa “We Are the Daughters of Aunt Jemima: Remembering Black Women’s History”
Week 13 (April 14) Suzan-Lori Parks
Parks, Suzan Lori The America Play
*Carpenter, Faedra C. “Spectacles of Whiteness from Adrienne Kennedy to Suzan Lori-Parks
*Geis, Deborah “Resurrecting Lincoln”
Week 14 (April 21) Katori Hall
Halls, Katori The Mountaintop
*Diggs-Colbert, Soyica “Black Leadership at the Crossroads: Unfixing Martin Luther King Jr. in Katori Hall’ The Mountaintop”
Week 15 (April 28) Lydia Diamond
Diamond, Lydia, Harriet Jacobs
*Anderson, Lisa “ A Black Feminist Aesthetic”
Week 16 May 5
Review/Catch-up/Conclusions
FINAL EXAM AS SCHEDULED