What is performance studies NYU and Northwestern define an elusive field Essay Example For Students

What is performance studies? NYU and Northwestern define an elusive field Essay Performance studies is the ideal field of study for the intellectually promiscuous. In what other academic program can you research the death rituals of the Yanomamo tribe, compare them to the construction of the self in a Jane Fonda exercise video, and then present your findings in the form of a modern dance piece? This particular project has yet to be undertaken, but compared to a list of actual performances studies dissertations written by students at Northwestern and New York universities, it doesnt seem that far out: Playing at Death, Performance, Play and Pigs in Hawthornes Social Romances, The Peasants Theatre Experiment in Ding Xian County So what is performance studies, anyway? Depends on who you ask. But rest assured, the answer will never be brief. Pressed for a one-sentence definition of the term, Dwight Conquergood, the recently appointed chair of the department of performance studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., ventured, We begin with the definition of humankind as homo performance, as an essentially performing creature, and pick up where theatre leaves off, and then continued, We study text through performance, but non-dramatic texts: autobiographies, diaries, prison notebooks, poems, novels, short stories, ethnographies, oral traditions and so forth. And then we move toward nonwestern, non-elite performance practicescelebrations, rituals and ceremoniesmoving to the whole performance -perspective on the theatricality of everyday life. We will write a custom essay on What is performance studies? NYU and Northwestern define an elusive field specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now Joe Roach, Conquergoods counterpart at New York University, puts it this way, Performance studies is organized around what Richard Schechner calls restored behaviorthat which can be recreated, reenacted and reinvented. Its poised on the cusp of the arts and the human sciences, embracing anthropology and theatre (and dance and music) and the performance of everyday life. But more than a topic, performance studies is a methoda way of looking at human behavior from a point of view that emphasizes actions that can be recreated. Confused? Perhaps its easier to approach the question from an institutional perspective. Presently, there are two full-fledged performance studies departments in the country. Northwestern University offers graduate and undergraduate degrees in the subject; New York University, graduate degrees only. Both programs evolved somewhat independently, and now are spawning offshoots in institutions as far-flung as California Institute of the Arts and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Northwesterns department of performance studies traces its roots back to the 19th century, to the oldest department in the universitys school of speech. It was originally called the department of elocution, then the department of oral interpretation, then the department of interpretation, and finally, in 1984, it took its current name. The departments commitment to the oral interpretation of literature has remained steadfast since the beginning, though the definition of oral has been broadened to include other performative modes such as song and movement, and the definition of literature has been broadened to includein Conquergoods wordsany human document. More simply put, in Northwesterns program, performance is both the subject and the method of study. Its students study performance, and then often perform their research. While Northwesterns department was on its second or third name-change, NYUs was still just the seed of an idea, germinating in New Orleans. At the time, Tulane University housed a journal called the Tulane Drama Review (formerly the Carlton Drama Review and now TDR), the central repository for the ideas of performance studies, according to Roach. Then, in 1967, several Tulane faculty membersincluding Richard Schechnermigrated to Greenwich Village to establish the graduate drama department at NYU: more than 10 years later the department was renamed performance studies. Its character was forged by the avant garde performance movement of the 60s, and it retains to this day some of its original spirit of experiment and play. Scholars at NYU freely borrow analytical tools from many disciplinesanthropology, feminist theory, semiotics, movement analysis, psychologyand use them to examine performances of all kinds. .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6 , .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6 .postImageUrl , .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6 , .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6:hover , .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6:visited , .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6:active { border:0!important; } .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6:active , .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6 .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u376d3068df4683ff81a14f5aa65910b6:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Greek Theater EssayThe differences between these two flagship programs are evidenced by their past and present course lists. Northwesterns lists lean toward the literaryPerforming Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Shakespeare: Performance and Criticism, Non-fiction studieswhile NYUs smack of lusty, dusty anthropologyCommodity Fetishism, Fieldwork of Performance, Sexuality on Stage. (For years, the joke went around NYUs halls that the sexier the course title, the dryer and more theoretical the actual class.) The dissertations produced at Northwestern and NYU also give some clues to the programs differences. At Northwestern, youll see titles like A Structural Analysis of Arthur Millers Major Plays, while at NYU, you get Rock Music and the Microchip and Performers, Play and Agency: Yoruba Ritual Process. Whatever their differences, eclectic is the operative word in both performance studies departments. To begin with, theyre staffed with faculty from all walks of academia. Northwestern houses specialists in everything from urban anthropology (Conquergood) to real live theatre (Frank Galati and Paul Edwards). NYU has Schechner, a ground-breaking theatre practitioner and theoretician; popular culture historian Brooks McNamara; dance scholars Marcia B. Siegel and Deborah Jowitt; folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett; and feminist theorist Peggy Phelan. This range of instructors attracts students with similarly eclectic backgrounds. Take NYU doctoral candidate Edward David Miller. He started out as a French literary theorist, moved into poetry and performance, and now works on the editorial staff of TDR to help offset his tuition and living expenses. The typical performance studies student is either, like Miller, a comparative literature or anthropology scholar with an artistic bent, or a former MFA student whos looking for intellectual challenge. Ensconced in an aggressively multidisciplinary department, inquiring minds like Millers are free to run wild. In preparation for his dissertation, Miller is investigating alien abductions, and how theyve been represented in movies and in radio and stage plays. He explains: Im interested in peopleprimarily menwho believe theyve been taken over by alien beings. My focus is not so much on whether its true or not, nor whether these men are pathologically crazy, but what in fact the stories are that theyre telling, and how theyre telling them. And how that relates to an anxiety about masculinity, an anxiety about nationalism, and an anxiety about foreignness.' So what do you do when youve graduated from a program that few people have ever heard of, clutching an impeccably documented dissertation on alien abductions? Ill have no choice but to stay in academia, Miller admits. Conquergood claims theres no shortage of academic jobs for qualified performance studies graduates: Weve got people teaching at Ithaca College, University of Illinois, Southern Illinois University. They usually end up being performance studies specialists within a larger department, such as speech or speech communications, or sometimes humanities or English. Other performance studies students find jobs as archivists, dramaturgs, or arts or cultural critics. Their training is so rich and broad, in Roachs words, that most graduates have no trouble findingor inventingtheir niche in the professional world. And before long, there may be more performance studies programs to employ some of the graduates that NYU and Northwestern are turning out. Cal Arts, for instance, has just hired two performance studies post-doctoral scholars (one from each school). Northwestern alumna Della Pollock is teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and NYUs Ann Daly teaches in an inter-disciplinary (theatre, dance and anthropology) program at the University of Texas at Austin. Conquergood is convinced that theres no better time to be engaged in performance studies. Theres never been a moment when the diverging intellectual currents have been more inviting, he says, because of the rise of cultural studies and the more positive aspects of the deconstructivist movement. English departments and other departments that used to be absolutely scriptocentric are now very, very open to performance. The PMLA even commissioned a special issue on performance. When I was a graduate student, that would have been unthinkable.