Spring 2006 Courses

English 136: Introduction to Drama (Tarnoff)

M/W/F 9:40-10:40 am, CAR 204

A survey of drama and dramatic forms from ancient times to the present, with attention to questions of production and performance as well as to explorations of the different contexts in which the texts of plays are enjoyed and analyzed --- as works of literature, as pieces of popular entertainment, and as scripts for public rituals.  How do the particular modes of storytelling we associate with the theater serve to produce notions of character, gender, and sexuality? Wherein do these notions of identity reside (in language, the body, etc.)?

Plays:  Antigone (Sophocles), Twelfth Night (Shakespeare), The Duchess of Malfi (Webster), The Beggar’s Opera (John Gay), The Cherry Orchard (Anton Chekhov), Krapp’s Last Tape (Samuel Beckett), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Edward Albee), The Bacchae of Euripides (Wole Soyinka), Anna in the Tropics (Nilo Cruz), Top Girls (Caryl Churchill).

Spring 2006 Course Listings