3.0

Average Course Rating

Picturing Performance takes up the material traces of ancient Greek performance—the remains of theaters, paintings, masks, and musical instruments, as well as epigraphic, papyrological, and other textual transmissions of these works—alongside contemporary receptions of these performances, which have been such a rich site of reworking. Examples include: the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and Anäis Mitchell’s Hadestown, Euripides’ The Bacchae and Hope Mohr Dance’s Before Bacchae, and Sophocles’ Antigone and Theater of War’s Antigone in Ferguson. These ancient performances engage questions of gender and sexuality, constructions of race, migration, citizenship, and belonging, power, governance, and resistance, disease and collective healing, among the subjects that have also inspired contemporary interpretations. All texts will be read in translation. We will visit museum collections in the region and, where possible, see live performances of these works.