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Culture in / as Performance

Module description

This module looks at the relationship between performance and culture. You will explore different approaches to understanding and defining culture, and look at issues of the representation of ethnicity, gender and national identity in different types of performances including theatre, popular culture, films, and museums. You will use theories from performance studies and cultural studies, including globalization, transnationalism, diaspora theory and postcolonialism to look at these performances in different cultural contexts, questioning how identity and culture reflects and/or resists definitions of the ‘norm’ or the ‘other’. You will  also look at the way that nations and cultures perform themselves as a form of making and promoting national or local identity, and preserve or challenge this identity through the idea of ‘heritage’. You will conduct your own ethnographic cultural study of a performance, event or place as part of the module. 

Module aims - intentions of the module

The module aims to introduce you to questions of culture, identity and representation in performance across different cultures and national contexts, to see how performance can be situated in the wider framework of issues of globalization, neoimperialism and postcolonialism. The module will begin by looking at definitions of culture in relation to performance, and will look at theories from performance studies including interculturalism, to see how performance and culture has been investigated historically within the field. The module then introduces students to a range of readings and performance contexts to investigate pertinent contemporary issues of the effects of globalization and neoimperialism, and how performance can be used to either reinforce or resist this. In this way, the research, teaching and learning the student will undertake will offer future employability potential through having a greater awareness of a range of performance forms from different cultural contexts, as well as a deeper understanding of how contemporary issues are affecting and are reflected by different approaches to performance.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate an understanding of the issues relating to performance and culture in different contexts, and the flow and adaptation of performance around the world.
• 2. Demonstrate knowledge of the range of scholarly and theoretical approaches to performance and culture.
• 3. Demonstrate an ability to evaluate the relationships between the social, cultural, historical, and ideological contexts and forms of performances.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Contribute research to small groups in effective presentations; tevaluate visual evidence and analyse, critique and manipulate complex material.
• 5. Apply library and IT skills in independent additional research.
• 6. Work effectively with others in small task-orientated groups; initiate and sustain creative, analytic and interpretative work within strict time limits.

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. Develop personal research skills using personal initiative; set personal objectives and identify and evaluate personal learning strategies.
• 8. Develop group cooperation skills, including the ability to give and receive constructive critical feedback and improve communication skills and analytic abilities in discussions.
• 9. Collaborate in various groups and group sizes, to learn elements of teamwork and presentation.
• 10. Balance between self-direction and collaborative work; self-management, collaborative working skills, problem solving, critical analysis and valuing own and others ideas and beliefs.

Syllabus plan

The module will begin with examining key terms and definitions relating to culture and performance. The rest of the seminars will look at a key range of theories, and performance contexts.  Student presentation assessments will be in Week 9, with students working on the Critical Portfolio during Weeks 11 and 12, before this is submitted in Week 12. Support for both assessments will be given during the module. 

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Balme, Christoher, Decolonizing the Stage (Oxford, 1999) - available online through the library catalogue
• Gilbert, Helen, ed, (Post)colonial Stages: critical and creative views on drama, theatre and performance (Hebden Bridge: Dangaroo Press, 1999)
• Ley, Graham and Dadswell, Sarah, eds, British South Asian Theatres: A Documented History, (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2011) Ley, Graham and Dadswell, Sarah, eds, Critical Essays on British South Asian Theatre (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2011)
• Jacqueline Lo and Helen Gilbert, ‘Toward a Topography of Cross-Cultural Theatre Praxis’ , TDR Vol. 46, No. 3 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 31-53
• Neilsen and Ybarra, eds, Neoliberalism and global theatres (Palgrave, 2012), electronic resource

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=11166
  

Key words search

Culture, performance, transnationalism, globalisation