Graduate Seminar

AmeriCan ChaRacter:
Identity, Race, and Performativity
HUAS-6340-002-AS 1.105

A Theoretical and Performative Course offered by

University of Texas’s School Arts & Humanities
w/ 9:30-12:15pm Spring Semester 2005

Professor: Venus Opal Reese

Office: JO3.514, (0) 972.883.2013 opal@utdallas.edu
Office Hours: w/th3:25-4:25pm or by appointment

And so it begins…

This course is performative in approach, delivery, context,

and content.
What does that mean?
It means that this course is designed to give you the
opportunity to think differently about the construction of
history and the formation of identity from the perspective
of race, as well as to write theory rigorously,
subjectively, artistically, and creatively.
Oh.

(pause)

but what does it do?

What “it?”
The course?
This course is a performative introspection on the process
of becoming…
Uuuh—ok, but

This course is an introgression of public history and

private memory…
—But I
This course is an investigation into how one is
nothing more than an articulation recognized by an
other-
—oh.

(longer pause)
 But, what’s it about?
What “it?”
This course.
(sigh in exasperation and just a bit impatient)
I just told you .
(roll eyes, bite lip)
I don’t get it.
Perhaps I can help.
Oh~! Huh?
Who are you? Who
are you?
Just a third voice to break-up the monotony.
In addition, I function as that which disrupts the binary.
This course investigates the roots of what it means to be American and how slavery in
North America manifests itself in our contemporary world as the fulfillment
of the American dream.
The class is designed so that the students have the opportunity to write and present
performatively about how race, in combination with gender, class, and sexuality,
“performs” identity and perpetuates “American” as performance.

That’s what I said.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnyway…

(jeezs_)

How about the facts…

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 Measures:
10%——Attendance, preparedness and participation (i.e., law-
briefs, reading assignments, conversations, playtime, etc.)
10%——250-300 abstract for final presentation
15%——20-minute oral pre-final presentation
15%——4-5 page summation of project (including a current
annotated bibliography, or for performing artists, a list
of major performances.) The handout and oral presentation
must present a clear outline of key points you will cover
for the final project, as well as describing your approach.
50%——Final presentation/performative paper, between 0-15
pages
that includes some use of technology and art in
presentation.

Required Texts:
Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York:
Rutledge, 1993)
Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1997)
Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1985)
Andrew Parker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, ed., Performativity and Performance.
Ron Eyerman, Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American
Identity. Cambridge University Press, 2001

Suggested Readings On Reserve:

Chaudhuri, Una. Staging Place: The Geography of Modern Drama. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the
Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Diamond, Elin, ed. Performance and Cultural Politics. London:
New York: Routledge, 1996.
Hartman, Saidiya V. Scenes of Subjection. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1982.
Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Disabilities Statement: If you would like to request academic accommodations due to a

disability, please contact Disability Services, which is located in room 1.610 in the
Student Union. Office hours are Monday and Thursday, 8:30 AM to 6:30 PM, Tuesday
and Wednesday, 8:30 AM to 7:30 PM, and Friday, 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM. The Disability
Services email is: http://www.utdallas.edu/stidemt/slife/jcsvc.html.

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Scholastic Dishonesty: Scholastic dishonesty is subject to severe penalty up to and
including expulsion. As you are working on your papers, please be conscientious about
carefully recording your citations and maintaining a solid separation between your voice
and that of source materials. Please read the following webpage so that you do not
accidentally cheat in any form:
http://www.utdallas.edu.student/slife/scholastic.html.

Incomplete Grade: A grade of Incomplete may be given, at the discretion of the

instructor of record for a course, when a student has completed at least 70% of the
required course material but cannot complete all requirements by the end of the semester.
A course graded as incomplete (grade of X) must be completed within the time period
specified by the instructor, not to exceed eight weeks from the first day of the subsequent
long semester. Please see the following web address for more detailed information:
http://www.utdallas.edu/student/catalog/undergrad03/progress.html#Grading%20Scale.

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 Schedule:
Each reading assignment (RA) is to be completed by class meeting on assigned date.
The following is subject to change at the instructor’s discretion

Week #1: Beginnings: Let’s Get an Understanding

01/11 Course Introduction

Week #2: The Difference: Performativity and Performance

01/18 RA: Performativity and Performance

Week #3: New Historicism by way of Rupture: A Break in Belonging as a Break in Time
01/25 RA: Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History

Week #4:
02/02 RA: The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Unmaking)

Week #5: Expanding and Contracting Realities: Identity Formation through Erasure
02/01 RA: The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Making)

Week #6: Who’s on Top: An investigation of Power

02/08 RA: The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection

Week #7: Bodies Gendered: Historicity verses Discursive Incantations

02/15 RA: Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”

Week #8: Bodies Gendered: Historicity verses Discursive Incantations

02/22 RA: Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”

Week #9: The Color of Trauma: Politics though Race and Collective Memory
03/01 RA: Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity

Week #10: Spring Break

03/08 SPRING BREAK
Please email me the abstracts for your projects.

Play-time with Form: Conversations in race, class, and memory/CT

Week #11:
03/15 Play-time with Form: Conversations in sexuality, gender, and Americanism/BTM,
TPLOP, PAP

Week #12:
03/22 Play-time with Form: Making and Unmaking Self/ TBIP

Week #13:
03/29 Play-time with Form: Breaks in Belonging/UE

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Week #14:
04/05 TBA Oral Presentations

Week #15:
04/12 Feedback/revisions/wrap-up

Week #16: Final Presentation

04/19 Final Presentations

Week #18: Final Presentation

04/26 Final Presentations

One final note:

It is a privilege to participate with you.
Thank you for your genius.
I’m looking forward to an extraordinary semester with you…