EL 68 D (Tekinay)
Th 2 3 4 (TB 480)
Fall 2015
SYLLABUS (This is a tentative syllabus. The selected plays may be subject to change.
The course packs will be available at Yunus Copy on August 15.)
This course is designed to read British drama from the late 1950s to the present in
the light of modern theories of violence and evil.
Class policy:
Students are expected to
*attend all classes,
*come to class having read the assigned material for the day,
*write six response papers on texts of their choice (max. 1000 words),
*make two in-class presentations,
*write a paper of 4500-5000 words.
Suggested Reading:
McNeil, Elton B. ed. The Nature of Human Conflict. NewJersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965.
Print.
Berkowitz, Leonard. “Aggression, Psychology of.” Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and
Conflict. 2nd Ed. NP: Elsevier, 2008. 29-38. Print.
Fromm, Erich. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. NewYork: Holt, Reinhard and
Winston, 1973. Print.
Foucault, Michel. “Right of Death and Power over Life”. Violence in War and Peace:
An Anthology. Ed. Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philip Bourgois. 2005 ed. Malden:
Blackwell, 2004. 79-82. Print.
Zizek, Slavoj. Violence. London: Profile, 2008. Print.
Nordstrom, Carolyn. Shadows of War: Violence, Power and International
Profiteeering in the Twenty-First Century. Berkeley: U of California, 2004. Print.
Scarry, Elaine. “From the Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World.”
Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology. Ed. Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philip
Bourgois. 2005 ed. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 365-367. Print.
Malkin, Jeanette. Verbal Violence in Contemporary Drama: From Handke to Shepard.
Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1992. Print.
Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. London: Penguin books, 1991. Print.
Sierz, Aleks. In-yer-face Theatre: British Drama Today. London: Faber, 2001. Print.
Sierz, Aleks. Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today. London: Methuen Drama,
2011. Print.
Boudrillard, Jean. The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena. Trans.
James Benefict. London: Verso, 1993. Print. (* Chapter: “Whatever Happened to
Evil”)
Foucault, Michel. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Ed. Paul Rainbow. NewYork: The
New Press, 1997. Print.
Eagleton, Terry. On Evil. New Haven: Yale U P, 2010. Print.
Artaud, Antonin. The Theatre and its Double. NewYork: Grove Press, 1958. Print.
Card, Claudia. The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil. Oxford: Oxford U P, 2002.
Print.
Bigsby, C.W.E. “The Politics of Anxiety: Contemporary Socialist Theatre in England”.
Modern Drama (1981). Vol. 24.
Gould, Thomas. Violence in Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1991. Print.
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Orlando: Harvest Books, 1994.
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Rev. ed.
NewYork: Penguin Books, 1997. Print.
Adorno, Theodore. The Authoritarian Personality. NewYork: Harper & Row, 1950.
Print.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. NewYork: Penguin Classics, 1993. Print.
Lima, Robert. Stages of Evil: Occultism in Western Theatre and Drama. Lexington: U
Press of Kentucky, 2005.
Urban, Ken. “Towards a Theory of Cruel Britannia: Coolness, cruelty and the
nineties”. New Theatre Quarterly 20, 354-372.
Zizek, S. “Language, Violence and Non-violence”. International Journal of Zizek
Studies. [On-line] 2:3
http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzu/article/view/154/240
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Week 1: Introduction to theories on violence
Week 2: Violence and Evil
Week 3: Political Theories on Evil
Week 4: Harold Pinter [ The Birthday Party, The Hothouse, One for the Road,
Mountain Language]
Week 5: Edward Bond [Lear, Saved]
Week 6: Arnold Wesker [Chips with Everything, Chicken Soup with Barley]
Week 7: in-yer-face drama
Sarah Kane
Week 8: Martin McDonaugh [The Beauty Queen of Leenane ] and Mark Ravenhill
[Shopping and F***ing, Some Explicit Polaroids]
Week 9: Martin Quinn [Attempts on Her Life] and Howard Barker [Scenes from an
Execution]
Week 10: Joe Penhall [Blue/Orange] and Dennis Kelly [After the End, Osama]
Week 11: Philip Ridley [Piranha Heights, Mercury Fur] and Jez Butterworth [Mojo]
Week 12: Conference