COURSE CODE: AN3014MA01PhD
FALL SEMESTER 2013
Title:
Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Modern American Drama
Training:
MA in American Studies II and PhD in Modern Philology
Time & Place: Fri 10. 00 – 11. 40, Rm 54, Mbl
Instructors:
Office Hours: Tue 13. 00 – 13.50 &Thu
10.00–11.00 Rm 118 Mbl, Tel.: 512 900/22069
Lenke Németh
Gabriella Varró
nemeth.lenke@arts.unideb.hu
Office Hours: Mon 10.00-11.00, Wed 13.0014.00, Rm 116/1 Mbl, Tel.: 512 900/22152
gabriella.varro@gmail.com
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course presents a review of the major milestones in American drama history that
demonstrate the ways mainstream and ethnic dramatists chose to stage difference in terms of
race, ethnicity, and gender. Although the images presented in the plays selected from the
twentieth and the first decade of the twenty first centuries might strike one as extremely
diverse, all of them highlight a common dilemma: how the white dominant, mainstream,
hegemonic society delimits difference of various kinds. The course attempts to chart an
evolutionary history of major American dramatists’ representations of the “Other” and assess
their contributions to American stages both in terms of theme and form. The selected
playwrights represent a diverse group of writers whose voices have already shaped and will
continue to shape American drama. This team-taught lecture+seminar course provides a
review of the most important theoretical issues related to the representation of Otherness in
literature, with a special emphasis on the theater, and aims to provide a close reading of
selected primary texts to demonstrate the changing representation of the cultural, racial, social
Others in American drama.
REQUIREMENTS:
Participation in classroom discussion: students are expected to take an active part in
classroom discussions. This activity contributes to the seminar grade. The assigned
text(s) should be read for the class.
In-class presentation
It is a max. 10-minute talk on a critical or a theoretical essay related to the work on the
agenda. MA students are required to give their presentations on scholarly studies
written about the plays, while PhD students’ presentation topic will concern theoretical
issues related to the individual plays. In either case, students are recommended to
critically reflect on some of the issues treated in the readings.
The presentation should serve as a good starting point to initiate class discussion.
Sign-up for these in-class oral presentations will take place during our orientation
session on September 10.
WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS
Response paper:
Students are required to hand in a one-page response paper (printed) at the beginning of each
class. For MA students response papers should summarize the main points of the assigned
critical reading that accompanies the work(s) on the agenda. For Ph.D. students these
response papers should involve a critical reflection on the secondary work/s read.
Additionally, PhD students will be required to read TWO further critical readings during the
semester and hand in their response papers on them in due time. The selection of the texts will
be consulted with the tutors.
Endterm test:
An in-class test that assesses your familiarity with the material covered during the semester
will commence on December 20. The contents of this test will be specified further as the end
of the term is approaching.
Research paper:
A take-home essay of about 1,800 to 2,000 words in the case of MA students, and 2,000 to
2,300 words in the case of PhD-students on a topic related to the thematic concerns of the
course. The research paper is due on December 16th (Week 14). Please note that topics for
these essays should be approved by the instructors, hence essay outlines and proposals (with
thesis statement and theoretical concerns specified, as well as potential critical readings to be
incorporated), of about a page in length should be handed in by November 29th (Week 11).
In case you have questions concerning the choice, tutorial consultation and advice is
recommended and available.
The essay should meet the formal and academic requirements of a research paper. The
essay is to be submitted by the defined deadline, otherwise the grade will be lowered.
Secondary reading and scholarly documentation, conforming to the requirements of the
MLA Style Sheet, are required. Plagiarism and academic dishonesty will result in a
failure as described in the Academic Handbook of the Institute. Format: 2,5 cm margins,
double spaced, full and correct citation, alphabetical works cited (MLA Style), fastened, with
student’s name on each page. The cover sheet must also contain the following statement:
“Hereby I certify that the essay conforms to international copyright and plagiarism
rules and regulations,” and also the signature of the student.
Deadlines:
Nov 29th: Topics for the essays
Dec 16th : Take-home essay
GRADING POLICY:
Participation: 10%
Response paper: 10%
Presentation: 20 %
End-term paper:30%
Take-home essay: 30 %
N. B. Absences: no more than three absences are allowed. Each absence counts as one point
reduction in the overall achievement. In the case of a longer absence (either due to
illness, or official leave), the tutor and the student will come to an agreement of how
to solve the problem.
CLASS SCHEDULE:
Sep 13
Registration
Introduction. Definitions of concepts.
(1) Sep 20
Eugene O’Neill, The Emperor Jones (1920)
Diya M. Abdo. “The Emperor Jones: A Struggle for Individuality.” The Eugene O’Neill
Review. 24.1.2 (2000): http://www.eoneill.com/library/review/24-1.2/24-1.2e.htm
(2) Sep 27
Eugene O’Neill, All God’s Chillun Got Wings (1924)
Gillett, Peter. “O’Neill and the Racial Myths.” Twentieth-Century Literature.
Shaughnessy, Edward Phillip. “Eugene O’Neill: The Development of Negro Character.”
MELUS
(3) Oct 4
Adrienne Kennedy, A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White (1976)
Meigs, E. Susan. “No Place But the Funnyhouse: The Struggle for Identity in Three Adrienne
Kennedy Plays.” June Schlueter, ed. Modern American Drama: The Female Canon.
Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1990. 172-84
(4) Oct 11
Arthur Miller, A View from the Bridge (1955)
Brewer, Mary F. “Queering Whiteness: Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge.” Staging
Whiteness. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan, 2005. 77-83.
(5) Oct 18
Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
Lipari, Lisbeth. "Fearful of the Written Word": White Fear, Black Writing, and Lorraine
Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun screenplay. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1479-5779, Volume
90, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 81 – 102.
(6) Oct 25
Sam Shepard’s, A Lie of the Mind (1985)
Rosen, Carol. “Sam Shepard Feminist Playwright: The Destination of A Lie of the Mind.”
Contemporary Theatre Review. 8.4 (1998): 29-40.
(7) Nov 1 HOLIDAY
(8) Nov 8
Luiz Valdez, I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges! (1986)
Huerta, Jose, “Reclaiming Aztec and Maya Mythology.” 26-40
(9) Nov 15
Cherrie Moraga, Giving Up the Ghost (1994)
Huerta, Jorge. “Cherri Moraga’s Transgressive Queers.” Chicano Drama: Performance,
Society and Myth. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. 151-66.
(10) Nov 22
David Mamet, Oleanna (1992)
Goggans, Thomas H. “Laying Blame: Gender and Subtext in David Mamet’s Oleanna.”
Modern Drama 40.4 (1997): 433-41.
(11) Nov 29
Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
Arrell, Douglass. “Homosexual Panic in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Modern Drama 51.1 (2008)
60-72.
(12) Dec 6
Suzan-Lori Parks, The America Play (1994)
Geis, R. Deborah, “Resurrecting Lincoln.” Suzan-Lori Parks. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan
P, 2008. 97-126.
(13) Dec 13
David Henry Hwang, Yellow Face (2007)
Park, Samuel, “Yellow Face.” Theatre Journal 60.2 (2008): 280-83.
(14) Dec 20
In-class endterm paper
SUGGESTED READINGS ON DRAMA AND THEATRE THEORY
Anderson, Lisa M. Black Feminism in Contemporary Drama. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2008.
Case, Sue-Ellen and Janelle Reinelt, eds. The Performance of Power: Theatrical Discourse
and Politics. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1991.
Fuchs, Elinor. The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theater after Modernism.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996.
Garner, Stanton. B. Jr. Phenomelogy and Performance in Contemporary Drama. Ithaca:
Cornell UP, 1994.
Huerta, Jorge. Chicano Drama: Performance, Society and Myth. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2000.
Keyssar, Helene. Feminist Theatre and Theory. London: Macmillan, 1996.
Knowles, Ric, Joanne Tompkins, and W. B. Worthen. Modern Drama: Defining the Field.
Toronto: U of Toronto, 2003.
Schmidt, Kerstin. The Theater in Transformation: Postmodernism in American Drama.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005.
SUGGESTED READINGS:
Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. Boston, MA: Beacon Hill, 1955.
Bigsby, C. W. E. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama: Beyond
Broadway. 3 vols. New York: Cambridge UP, 1985.
---. Modern American Drama, 1945-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.
---. Contemporary American Playwrights. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.
---, ed. The Cambridge Companion to David Mamet. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.
Bottoms, Stephen J. The Theatre of Sam Shepard. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.
Brater, Enoch, ed. Feminine Focus: The New Women Playwrights. Oxford, OUP, 1989
Brater, Enoch and Ruby Cohn, eds. Around the Absurd: Essays on Modern and Postmodern
Drama. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1990.
Brater, Enoch, ed. The Theatrical Gamut: Notes for a Post-Beckettian Stage. Ann Arbor: The
UP of Michigan Press, 1995.
Brewer, Mary F. Staging Whiteness. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan, 2005.
Bryant-Jackson, Paul K. and Lois More Overbeck, eds. Intersecting Boundaries: The Theatre
of Adrienne Kennedy. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1992.
Brown, E. Barnsley. “The Clash of Verbal and Visual (Con)Texts: Adrienne Kennedy’s
(Re)Construction of Racial Polarities in An Evening with Dead Essex and A Movie
Star Has to Star in Black and White.” Kimball King, ed. Hollywood on Stage:
Playwrights Evaluate the Culture Industry. New York: Garland, 1997.
Caliz-Montoro, Carmen. Writing from the Borderlands: A Study of Chicano, Afro-Caribbean
and Native Literatures in North America. Toronto: TSAR, 2000.
Chénetier, Marc, ed. Critical Angles: European Views of Contemporary American Literature.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1986.
Cohn, Ruby. Anglo-American Interplay in Recent Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995.
Fuchs, Elinor. The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theater after Modernism.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996.
Garner, Stanton. B. Jr. Phenomelogy and Performance in Contemporary Drama. Ithaca:
Cornell UP, 1994.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the ‘Racial’ Self. New York:
Oxford UP, 1989.
Geis, Deborah R. Postmodern Theatric(k)s: Monologue in Contemporary American Drama.
Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1993.
---. Suzan-Lori Parks. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 2008.
Gubar, Susan. ”Perpetual Exile: The Curse of Color.” Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face
in American Culture. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.
Hall, Ann C. “A Kind of Alaska”: Women in the Plays of O’Neill, Pinter and Shepard.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1993.
Harris, Trudier, ed, Jennifer Larson assistant ed. Reading Contemporary American Drama:
Fragments of History, Fragments of Self. New York: Peter Lang: 2007.
Herman, William. Understanding Contemporary American Drama. Columbia: U of South
Carolina, 1987.
Jenckes, Norma. New Readings in American Drama: Something’s Happening Here. New
York: Peter Lang, 2002.
Kamm,
Jürgen, ed. Twentieth-Century
Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 1999.
Theatre
and
Drama
in
English.
Trier:
Knowles, Ric, Joanne Tompkins, and W. B. Worthen. Modern Drama: Defining the Field.
Toronto: U of Toronto, 2003.
McDonough, Carla J. Staging Masculinity: Male Identity in Contemporary American Drama.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997.
Macleod, Christine. “The Politics of Gender, Language and Hierarchy in Mamet’s Oleanna.”
Journal of American Studies 29.2 (1995): 199-213.
Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and Literary Imagination. New York:
Vintage, 1993.
Murphy, Brenda, ed. The Cambridge Companion To American Women Playwrights.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.
Németh, Lenke. “All it is, it's a carnival": Reading David Mamet's Women Characters with
Bakhtin. Debrecen: Kossuth Egyetemi K., 2007.
Ozieblo, Barbara and Maria Dolores Narbona-Carrion, eds. Codifying the National Self:
Spectators , Actors and the American Dramatic Text. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2006.
Pavis, Patrice. Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture.
Routledge, 1992.
Trans. Loran Kruger.
London:
Ryan, Steven. “Oleanna: David Mamet’s Power Play.” Modern Drama 39.3 (1996): 392-403.
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 1994.
Savran, David. In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights. New York:
Theater Communication Group, 1988.
---. “Interview with Luiz Valdez.” Worthen 606-613.
Schlueter, June, ed. Modern American Drama: The Female Canon. Rutherford: Fairleigh
Dickinson UP, 1990.
Schmidt, Kerstin. The Theater of Transformation: Postmodernism in American Drama.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005.
Schmidt, Peter. Postcolonial Theory and the US: Race, Ethnicity and Literature. Jackson: UP of
Mississippi, 2000.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason toward a History of the
Vanishing Present. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP. 1999
Smith, Jessie Carney, ed. Images of Blacks in American Culture: A Reference Guide to
Information Sources. New York: Greenwood P, 1988.
Sollors, Werner. Neither Black nor White yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial
Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999.
Varró, Gabriella. Signifying in Blackface: The Pursuit of Minstrel Signs in American
Literature. Debrecen: Kossuth Egyetemi K., 2008.
---."A másság retorikája Arthur Miller Pillantás a hídról és Tennessee Williams Macska a
forró bádogtetőn című drámáiban.” [“The Rhetoric of Queering in Tennessee Williams’Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof and Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge.”] Mi/Más konferencia 2010,
Gondolatok a másságról. Eger: Eszterházy Károly Főiskola, 2012. 266-279.
Virágos, Zsolt and Varró Gabriella. Jim Crow örökösei: mítosz és sztereotípia az amerikai
társadalmi tudatban és kultúrában. Budapest: Eötvös József K., 2002.
LN, GV