Fall semester
2020
LECTURE:
American Drama (Raise the Curtain!)
(this syllabus last edited on October
1, 2020)
Instructor: Prof. Thomas Austenfeld
Professor of American Literature, University of Fribourg
In the Fall of 2020, this
class will be taught at the U of Fribourg on Tuesdays and at the U of Bern on
Wednesdays. In each case, students will
enroll – and will take the final exam – according
to the specifications of their respective home universities. Please note the differential schedule for the final three
weeks of the semester below!
Teaching modality in the Fall of 2020, in view of the
COVID situation
This lecture will be taught completely online, for the most part
asynchronously, but with occasional meetings via TEAMS (Fribourg) or ZOOM
(Bern).
The lecture will be delivered via
PowerPoint presentation with soundfile. It will be posted weekly, at the
scheduled start of class.
The reading assignment for this class is pretty heavy:
in most weeks, you will be expected to read a full play before the next
meeting. By contrast, the lectures will be shorter than usual, since you will spend more time
studying on your own.
The lecture can
be listened to at any time after it has been posted. However, since you will be
expected to participate in a MOODLE discussion forum (Fribourg) or an ILIAS
discussion forum (Bern) afterwards, I advise you to attend the lecture as close
as possible to its scheduled time.
On a few
occasions during the semester, we will meet synchronously via MS-TEAMS or ZOOM to read and
discuss selected scenes from the plays we study. You are expected to
attend those meetings.
I am available in online office hours through various video
channels—details to be posted. Given the
feeling of remoteness that is engendered by online classes, I am particularly
eager to meet as many of my students through online communication, whether
individually or in groups!
Class description
I planned this class near the
start of 2020. Current events in the United States have made it far more urgent
to update the reading list in an attempt to reflect the recent work of Black and Indigenous dramatists. I have therefore
changed the assignments a bit as compared to the published course description,
especially towards the later part of term.
This lecture class will offer an
overview of American drama as a mirror of America's social history.
Rejected by the original Puritan
settlers, American drama first attempted to separate from British models in the
early Federal period (Royall Tyler's The Contrast
1787), then took a detour into melodrama (Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon 1859). Women's liberation concepts dominated the
stage at the start of the new century, as the country was moving in the
direction of finally giving women the vote (Nineteenth Amendment ratified in
1920): Rachel Crother's A Man's World (1910)
is a landmark play in its contribution to that discussion. From the early nineteen-teens onwards, the
Provincetown Players provided a fresh, experimental theater that thrust Eugene
O'Neill (Servitude 1914, not
discussed in this class) and Susan Glaspell (The Verge 1921), among others, into the spotlight. A normative
American domestic drama was firmly established with Thornton Wilder's Our Town (1938).
A post-WW II "golden age"
of American drama was ushered in by Tennessee Williams (The Glass Menagerie 1944) and Arthur Miller (All My Sons 1947). African American women writers like Lorraine
Hansberry (A Raisin in the Sun 1959)
and Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who
Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf 1976/ revised 2010)
found drama a congenial mode for the expression of simmering racial
conflicts. Tony Kushner's Angels in America (1991) became the
lasting expression of the AIDS crisis and possibly the most influential play of
the 1990s. Finally, Keith Barker's The Hours That Remain (2013) is a
searing exploration of the fates of Indigenous women in contemporary North
America.
In terms of popular influence and
social efficacy—though perhaps not in terms of social critique—American musical
theater established itself as a potent social and economic force over the
course of the 20th century.
Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1943) is the most famous and,
muscially and dramaturgically the most influential, of these musicals. It
inaugurated a "golden age" of musicals on and off Broadway,
culminating in the recent Hamilton (which,
regrettably, we won't have time to study here). In recent decades, American
drama has often mutated into episodic "dramas" streamed online, thus
evidencing the continuing social power of dramatic literature.
What do you need to do?
Read assigned materials,
especially the play for each week, before
coming to class, study more deeply after class, study the online lectures
provided weekly, contribute to the discussion forum on the electronic platform,
take a final exam on the last day of class. In the two meetings designated as
"Reading and Discussion Group," you must participate synchronously (will be worked out at
start of term).
Grades
Your grade in this class will
based on the result of the final exam. If your study plans has specific
requirements that deviate from this rule, tell me about it so we can make the
appropriate arrangements. Some study programs have provisions for Pass/Fail
grades—these are, of course, possible as well.
Materials and
knowledge base:
The
texts of the various plays will be provided on the electronic learning platform. Access to the electronic platform is secured with a password
which I will communicate to you. Making the plays available to you in this
manner, within the framework of an educational institution, is not a violation
of copyright. As students in this class, you commit yourselves to guarding the
copyright by not sharing or distributing the plays in any other venue.
They are available to you and you alone.
You do not
need to purchase anything at the bookstore.
Reading
groups
Read the plays ahead of class. I
encourage you strongly to form reading
groups among your friends and classmates. These can be done in person or
electronically on a shared platform. Rather than reading the play by yourself,
read it out loud with roles distributed among you. Advantages: you will study
at a fixed time, you won't feel lonely, the reading of the play will take just
as long as it would take in performance (i.e., normally, about two hours), you
will read the play at the speed at which
it was intended, and—most importantly—you will hear the words spoken, which is the key idea in drama intended for
the stage.
In some instances, I will direct you to videos of performances or movies
made from plays, available on YouTube.
You can (or should?) watch these with the texts open before you.
Schedule of
classes
|
September
15/16 |
Introduction
to class. Discuss the possible meanings of "American" and
"Drama" in the title. Brief
historical overview. A glance at Royall Tyler's The Contrast (1787) and
Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon (1859). We will only
look at excerpts of these plays. Selections
are posted on the electronic platform. |
|
|
September
22/23 |
First Reading and Discussion Group. Text to prepare: Rachel Crothers, A
Man's World (1910) Read full
text. We meet electronically today during class time !! |
|
|
September
29/30 |
Experiment and
Expressionism. The Provincetown
Players. Susan Glaspell, The Verge (1921) Read full
text. |
|
|
October 6/7 |
Thornton Wilder, Our
Town (1939) Read full
text. |
|
|
October 13/14 |
Tennessee Williams,
The Glass Menagerie (1944) Read full text. |
|
|
October 20/21 |
Arthur Miller,
All My Sons (1947) Read full
text. |
|
|
October 27/28 |
Lorraine Hansberry,
A Raisin in the Sun (1959) Read full
text. |
|
|
November 3/4 |
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Oklahoma ! (1943 / 1955) Read excerpts
and watch videos as indicated on the MOODLE / ILIAS site |
|
|
November 10/11 |
Ntozake Shange, for
colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf (1974) Read full
text. |
|
|
November 17/18 |
August Wilson, Fences
(1987) Read full
text. |
|
|
November 24/25 |
Second Reading and Discussion Group. Text to prepare: Tony Kushner, Angels
in America (1993) Read full text
of Part One ("Play One": Millennium
Approaches). |
|
|
December 1/2 |
FRIBOURG Keith Barker, The
Hours That Remain (2013) Read full
text. |
BERN Final Exam during class time |
|
December 8/9 |
FRIBOURG NO CLASS: Reading
Holiday to prepare for the Final Exam |
BERN Resit exam # 1
|
|
December 15/16 |
FRIBOURG FINAL EXAM |
BERN Resit exam # 2
for exceptional circumstances |