Decolonizing Curriculum: Teaching the Twenty-First-Century Dramatic Canon

Author:

Meerzon Yana

Abstract

I have been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in play-analysis, developmental dramaturgy, adaptation and new play creation for almost two decades. Trained within structural and semiotic approaches to text and performance analysis with emergence of what David Barnett calls “postdramatic theatre texts” (2008:14) and recent calls for decolonizing curriculum, I found myself at a philosophical and theoretical crossroads. This article summarizes my teaching practice and philosophy as inflected through decolonial methods. It argues for our need to teach students to simultaneously position every dramatic text within the critical lens of structural play-analysis and their historical/cultural contextualization or dramaturgical concretization (Vodička 1975). The twenty-first century dramatic texts I teach are often located within the postdramatic European theatre and performance canon (Lehmann 2006), as well as within postcolonial and Indigenous traditions of storytelling. The three plays I chose as my case studies— Arabian Night (2003) by German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig, Bintou (2002) by Koffi Kwahulé, a Côte d’Ivoire writer living in France, and Burning Vision (2003) by Marie Clements, a Canadian Metis theatre artist—constitute the core of my syllabus for a graduate course in dramaturgy.

Publisher

University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress)

Subject

Literature and Literary Theory

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3