Introductory description

The module set out to explore a broad constellation of recent European plays, performances, and films originating from different parts of Europe, which address the changing historical, political and cultural realities of Europe in the wake of the Iron Curtain’s collapse and the fall of communism in 1989. Specifically, the module aims to engage with the following pressing issues and concerns: How does theatre articulate Europe’s new sociocultural space, shaped and negotiated by the experiences of war, exile and the shifting contours of Europe’s borders and territories? How do European artists witness and respond to the current refugee crisis and stories of fraught Mediterranean crossings as migration becomes the defining issue of this century? How does performance address the complex issues of right-wing nationalism, the ongoing financial crisis, and social justice now that the EU faces the biggest crisis since its foundation? What are the ways in which performance takes part in the current debates in Europe concerning secularism, the rise of religious extremism, and fears about national security in the aftermath of the events such as the London bombings and the Paris attacks? How does theatre engage with the traumatic experiences of the Holocaust, the Stalinist Gulags, colonialism and imperialism, and current preoccupations with the politics of memory in Europe? We shall also explore aspects of European cultural policy, cosmopolitan stages of European theatre festivals as well as some popular expressions of “Europeannes” such as the Eurovision Song Contest as a site where cultural struggles over the meaning, frontiers, and limits of Europe are enacted.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

AUTUMN TERM SCHEDULE: * this is just an indicative content, subject to change

WEEK 1
Introduction to the course: framework, themes, and goals

SCREENING (in class):
Eurovision Song Contest entries – various artists (screening in class of excerpts followed by discussion)

WEEK 2

Singing Europe: Identities, Feelings and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest; (New) Europe as a Discourse

SEE/HEAR (some of the following):
Eurovision Song Contest – Helsinki 2007 (DVD, 2 discs);
Eurovision Song Contest – Kyiv 2005 (DVD, 2 discs);
Eurovision Song Contest – Istanbul 2004 (DVD, 2 discs)
Eurovision – Greatest Hits (DVD, 2004)

READ:
Karen Fricker and Milija Gluhovic, “Introduction: Eurovision and the ‘New’ Europe,” in
Performing the ‘New’ Europe: Identities, Feelings and Politics in the Eurovision Song
Contest, eds Karen Fricker and Milija Gluhovic. Basingstoke, England; New York:
Palgrave, 2013. 1-29.

RECOMMENDED:
Ivan Raykoff, “Camping on the Border of Europe,” in A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest (Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT:
Eurovision Song Contest official website: http://www.eurovision.tv

WEEK 3

1989/90: The Collapse of Utopia and the ‘New’ Europe

SEE:
***Europa by by Lutz Hϋbner, Malgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk, Tena Štivičić and Steve Waters at The Birmingham REP – 16-10 October (theatre outing tbc).
Wolfgang Becker, Good Bye Lenin! (2003) [see in preparation for the class; DVD 324, available in the Main Library]
Theodoros Angelopoulos, Ulysses’ Gaze (1995) [excerpt; screening in class; VIDEO 1089, Main Library]
New Europe, Dir. John Paul Davidson and Roger Mills; written and narrated by Michael Palin (BBC, 2007). DVD 946. [excerpts; screening in class]

READ:
Milija Gluhovic, “Introduction: Theorising Europe and Recollection,” in his Performing European Memories: Trauma, Ethics, Politics (London: Palgrave, 2013), 1-29.
Svetlana Boym, “Nostalgia and Its Discontents,” in The Hedgehog Review 9.2 (2007): 7-18.

Recommended:
Dominic Boyer: “Ostalgie and the Politics of the Future in Eastern Germany,” in Public Culture 18.2 (2006): 361-381.
Charity Scribner, “Introduction: The Second World,” in her Requiem for Communism (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003), 2-22.
Maya Nadkarni, “The Death of Socialism and the Afterlife of Its Monuments: Making and Marketing the past in Budapest’s Statue Park Museum,” in Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory, eds. Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone (London; New York: Routledge, 2003), 193-207.

WEEK 4
The Performance and the Holocaust: Contexts, Ethics, Politics

SEE:
The Dybbuk (Der Dibek) The original Yiddish-Polish film based on Sholom Anski's classic play about possession and exorcism (excerpt, 20 min.)
Excerpts from Tadeusz Kantor’s performance The Dead Class (1975)

READ:
Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class (London: Oberon Book, 2009).
For the reviews of the NT’s 2009-10 production of Our Class see: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/49663/productions/our-class.html
Diana Taylor, “Trauma and Performance: Lessons from Latin America,” PMLA 121.5 (2006): 1674-7.
Janine P. Holc, “Working Through Jan Gross’s ‘Neighbours’” Slavic Review 61.3 (Autumn, 2002): 453-59.

Recommended materials:
Małgorzata Pakier and Bo Stråth, “Introduction: A European Memory,” in A European Memory?: Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance, ed. M. Pakier and B. Strath (New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010), 1-24.

Dorota Glowacka and Joanna Zylinska, “Introduction: Imaginary neighbours: Towards an Ethical Community,” in Imaginary Neighbours: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust, ed. D. Glowacka and J. Zylinska (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 1-18.
Andrzey Wajda’s film Katyn (2009 [originally produced 2007]) [The DVD is available in the Library, STL, Class mark 1400.]

WEEK 5
(Friday): Violence, Mourning and the Testimony

SCREENING IN CLASS:
Artur Zmijewski, 80064 (10min)

READ:
Harold Pinter, Ashes to Ashes (New York: Grove Press, 1996).
Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spritzer, “The Witness in the Archive: Holocaust Studies/Memory Studies” in Memory Studies 2.2 (2009): 151-170.

Recommended materials:
Liliana Cavani, The Night Porter (1974) [available in the Main Library, DVD 672]
Claude Lanzmann, dir. Shoah (DVD DS 135.E831, the Main Library)
Diana Taylor, “Trauma as Durational Performance,” in O Percevejo Online http://www.seer.unirio.br/index.php/opercevejoonline/article/view/499/426
Marianne Hirsch, “Projected Memory: Holocaust Photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy,” in Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, eds. M. Bal, J. Crewe, and L. Spitzer (Hanover; London: UP of New England, 1999), 3-23.

Week Six: Reading Week

WEEK 7

Performance and Asylum: Ethics, Politics, Embodiment

SEE in advance of our class:
Paul Poet’s Auslander Raus! Schlingensief’s Container (Wien: Hoanzl, 2006; 90 min.); This is Paul Poet’s documentary of Christoph Schlingensief’s performance Auslander Raus [DVD 874, STL in the Main Library]

Screening on class:
Théâtre du Soleil’s La dernier caravansérail Odyssées. Dir. Ariane Mnocuhkine Paris: Arte Video, 2006. DVD [selected clips]

READ:
Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo, “Performance and Asylum: Ethics, Embodiment, Efficacy,” in Performance and Cosmopolitics: Cross-cultural Transactions in Australasia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 186-206; 219-20.

WEEK 8
Human Trafficking in Europe

SEE (in advance):
Larysa Kondracki’s film The Whisleblower (2010)

READ:
Stef Smith’s play Roadkill (2010)
Yuliya V. Tverdova, “Human Trafficking in Russia and Other Post-Soviet States” in Human Rights Review 12.3 (2011): 329-344.
Janelle Reinelt, “The Promise of the Documentary,” in Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present, eds. Alison Forsyth and Chris Megson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009): 6-23.

Recommended:
Moving People, Moving Images: Cinema and Trafficking in the New Europe, eds. William Brown, Dina Iordanova, Leshu Torchin (St Andrews : St Andrews Film Studies, 2010).

WEEK 9
Performance and Asylum: Ethics, Politics, Embodiment Cont’d

READ:
Kay Adshead, The Bogus Woman (London: Oberon, 2001).
Sophie Nield, “On the Border as Theatrical Space: Appearance, Dis-Location and the Production of Refugee,” in Contemporary Theatres in Europe: A Critical Companion, eds. Joe Kelleher and Nicholas Ridout (London; New York: Routledge, 2006), 61-72.
Mary Luckhurst, “Verbatim Theatre, Media Relations and Ethics,” in A Concise Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Drama, eds. Nadine Holdsworth and Mary Luckhurst (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 200-222.

WEEK 10

Mediterranean Crossroads: Journeys of Hope to Fortress Europe

SEE (screening in class, selected clips):
Ursula Biemann’s videos: Sahara Chronicle (Zurich: Geobodies, 2008; 76 min) and Europlex (Zurich: Geobodies, 2003; 20 min.) [DVD 1130, and DVD 1133 in the Short Term Loan section of the Main Library]

READ:
Jennifer Hyndman, and Wenona Giles, “Waiting for What? The Feminization of Asylum in Protracted Situations” in Gender, Place, Culture 18.3 (2011): 361-379.
T. J. Demos, “Sahara Chronicle: Video’s Migrant Geography,” Mission Reports: Artistic Practice in the Field: The Video Works of Ursula Biemann, ed. Ursula Biemann and Jan-Erik Lundström (Bildmuseet Umea and Arnolfini Bristol: Cornerhouse Publishers, 2008), 178-90. PDF version at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/art-history/about_us/academic_staff/dr_tj_demos/further_publications

Recommended reading:
Matthew Gibbney, “A Thousand Little Guantanamos: Western States and Measures to Prevent Arrival of Refugees,” in Migration, Displacement, Asylum: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2004, ed. K. Tunstall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Hannah Arendt, “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man,” The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968), 267-304.

SPRING TERM SCHEDULE:

WEEK 1
The Great Deception? The UK and the European Union

READ:
Luscombe, Tim. The Schuman Plan (London: Nick Hern, 2006).
Christopher Booker and Richard North, “The Real Deceit of Edward Heath: 1970-1973,” in their The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union (London: Continuum International Publishing, 2005), 134-157.
Susan Senior Nello, “An Introduction to European Integration: Definitions and Terminology,” and “A Brief History of European Integration,” in her European Union: Economics, Policies, History (Maidenhead, UK: McGraw-Hill Education, 2005), 1-10; 11-34.

WEEK 2
Creolization and Diaspora: Identity and Multiculture in France

SEE:
Mathieu Kassovitz, Hate (1996) [DVD available in the Main Library]

READ:
Theodore Dalrymple, “The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris,” in his Our Culture, What’s Left of It (Ivan R. Dee: Chicago: 2005), 296-310.
Murray Pratt, “Introduction: On Being Optimistically European: Modelling Creolization, Cosmopolitanism, and Community,” in Culture Theory, Critique 48:1 (Spring 2007): 11-24.

Week 3: Multicultural Germany and its Theatrical Representations

READ:
Theresia Walser, Our Forests Haven’t Been This Wild in Forever, trans. Claudia Wilsch Case, in Theater 36.3 (2006): 43-80.
Christopher Balme, “Tropes of Mixture: Reassessing Multiculturalism and Performance in Germany,” (2007) [unpublished paper; to be provided by the instructor]
Jane Wilkinson, “The Others within the Fortress Walls: The Place of the European Foreigner in Contemporary German Drama,” Third Text 20.6 (2006), 755-764.

WEEK 4

Between Fact and Fiction: Verbatim/Documentary Theatre and Ethics

READ:
Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo, Guantanamo: ‘Honour bound to Defend Freedom’ (London: Oberon Books Ltd, 2004).
Judith Butler, “Precarious Life,” in her Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London, New York: Verso, 2004), 128-152.
Wendy S. Hesford, “Staging Terror,” TDR: The Drama Review 53.3 (2006), 29-41.

WEEK 5
Death in Genoa: Stages of Resistance and the Anti-Globalisation Movement

SEE:
Dirk Szuszies, Resist! [a documentary about the latest work by The Living Theatre; screening in class of the excerpt with their street performance in Genoa in 2001; the DVD is available in the Main Library]
Societas Raffaello Sanzio’s The Tragedia Endogonidia [a ‘video memory’ of the company’s epic performance in eleven parts; we will try to arrange a group screening of Part 1, which addresses the events that transpired during the G8 Summit in Genoa in 2001, but the DVDs will also be available in the Main Library]

READ:
Fausto Paravidino, Genoa 01, trans. Gillian Hanna, 2002. [the play will be provided by the instructor]
Baz Kershaw, “Fighting in the Streets: Performance, Protest, Politics,” in his The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard (London: Routledge, 1999), 89-125.

Recommended:
Etiennne Balibar, “Outline of a Topography of Cruelty: Citizenship and Civility in the Era of Global Violence,” in his We, the People of Europe?: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship, trans. James Swenson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 115-132.

WEEK 6: Reading Week

WEEK 7
The EU Cultural Policy; The Black/North SEAS project (2008-2010)

SEE:
Intercult’s SEAS Project [screening in class of selected video materials from the SEAS project, an intercultural arts project that brings together artists from the Black and North Seas countries]

READ:
Wunderbaum’s Beer Tourist (2008) [the script will be provided by the instructor]
Kevin Robins, “Transnational Cultural Policy and European Cosmopolitanism,” in Cultural Politics 3.2 (2007): 147-174.
The project’s website: http://www.seas.se/
Other required readings tba

Recommended viewing:
Ursula Biemann’s Black Sea Files (2005) [available in the library]

Recommended reading:
Matthew Reason, “Glasgow’s Year of Culture and Discourses of Cultural Policy on the Cusp of Globalisation,” in Contemporary Theatre Review 16.1 (2006): 73-85.
Monica Sassatelli, “Imagined Europe: Shaping of a European Cultural Identity through EU Cultural Policy,” European Journal of Social Theory 5.4 (2002): 435-451.

WEEK 8
European Theatre Festivals

READ:
Brent Meersman, Savas Patsalidis, Max Glauner, Barbara Orel, and Rolf Dennemann, “Theatre Festivals: A Forum” in Theater 41.1 (2011): 79-103

Recommended reading:
Henri Schoenmakers, "Festivals, Theatrical Events and Communicative Interactions" in Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture, eds. Temple Hauptfleisch, Schulamith Lev-Aladgem, Jacqueline Martin, Willmar Sauter and Henri Schoenmakers (Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2007), 27-37.
Temple Hauptfleisch, “Festivals as Eventifying Systems” in Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture, eds. Temple Hauptfleisch, Schulamith Lev-Aladgem, Jacqueline Martin, Willmar Sauter and Henri Schoenmakers (Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2007), 40-47.

WEEK 9
European Theatre Directors (and European Theatre Festivals cont’d)

READ:
Maria M. Delgado and Dan Rebellato, “Introduction,” in Contemporary European Theatre Directors, ed. M. Delgado and D. Rebellato (London; New York: Routledge, 2010), 1-28.
James Woodall, “Thomas Ostermeier: On Europe, Theatre, Communication, and Exchange”, in Contemporary European Theatre Directors, ed. M. Delgado and D. Rebellato (London; New York: Routledge, 2010), 363-376.

WEEK 9
Final project presentations

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• By the end of the module students should be able to demonstrate a critical understanding of contemporary European theatrical practice in the light of cultural, political, historical, and philosophical issues across Europe in both historical and contemporary context, by way of making use of interpretative frameworks introduced or extended in the module.
• They should also be able to demonstrate an enlarged appreciation of the distinctiveness of European cultural contexts but also areas of commonality, as well as current political challenges facing Europe internationally.
• Furthermore, students should come away from this seminar with a new set of conceptual models, practical and analytic tools to make use of in thinking about this complex and rich body of art.Students will achieve these learning outcomes through close reading of primary and secondary material, seminar discussions based around prescribed texts and seminar papers on specific topics, and performance and curatorial workshops. In addition to film screening, performance recordings will be used to illustrate the theatrical dimensions of the plays. Weekly preparation prior to each seminar, based on set readings, will be crucial.

Indicative reading list

Agamben, Agamben. “Form of Life.” Means without Ends: Notes on Politics. Trans. Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2000. 3-14.
Balibar, Etienne. We, the People of Europe?: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Trans.
James Swenson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Bauman, Zygmunt. Europe: An Unfinished Adventure Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004.
Braidotti, Rosi. “Gender and Power in Post-Nationalist European Union.” NORA 12.3
Caruth, Cathy. “Introduction.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Ed. Cathy Caruth. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. 3-12; 151-157.
Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Eng, David L. and David Kazanjian. Loss: The Politics of Mourning. Berkley, Los
Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2003.
Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol.14. Trans. and ed. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1957. 243-258.
Frost, Laura. Sex Drives: Fantasies of Fascism in Literary Modernism. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2002.
Gibney, Matthew J. The Ethics and Politics of Asylum: Liberal Responses to Refugees.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Matthew J. Gibney, “’A Thousand Little Guantanamos’: Western States and Measures to Prevent the Arrival of Refugees,” in Displacement, Asylum, Migration: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2004, ed. Kate E. Tunstall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006):
139-169.
Gilbert, Helen and Jacqueline Lo, “Performance and Asylum: Ethics, Embodiment, Efficacy.” Performance and Cosmopolitics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 186-206; 219-20.
Hirsch, Marianne. “Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Postmemory.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 14.1 (2001): 5-37.
Hirsch, Marianne, and Valerie Smith. “Feminism and Cultural Memory: An
Introduction.” Signs 28.1 (2002): 1-21.
Hodgkin, Katherine and Susannah Radstone, eds. Regimes of Memory. London:
Routledge, 2003.
Levy, Carl. “The European Union After 9/11: The Demise of a Liberal Democratic
Asylum Regime?” Government and Opposition (Spring, 2005): 26-59.
Lozhinski, Yosefa. “Journeys of Hope to Fortress Europe.” Third Text. 20.6 (2006): 745-754.
Malkki, Liisa H. “Refugees and Exile: From ‘Refugee Studies’ to the National Order of Things.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995): 495-523.
Nield, Sophie. “On the Border as Theatrical Space: Appearance, Dis-Location and the Production of Refugee.” Contemporary Theatres in Europe: A Critical Companion. Eds. Joe Kelleher and Nicholas Ridout. London; New York: Routledge, 2006. 61-72.
Reinelt, Janelle. “Performing Europe: Identity Formation for a ‘New’ Europe,” Theatre Journal
53 (2001): 365-387.
Scribner, Charity. Requiem for Communism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press,
2003.
Taylor, Diana, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Duke UP, 2003.
Van Alphen, Ernst. “Playing the Holocaust.” [email me if you want a copy of this.]
Wolf, Christa. Parting from Phantoms: Selected Writings, 1990-94. Trans. Jan van
Heurck. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Subject specific skills

By the end of the module students should be able to demonstrate a critical understanding of contemporary European theatrical practice in the light of cultural, political, historical, and philosophical issues across Europe in both historical and contemporary context, by way of making use of interpretative frameworks introduced or extended in the module.
They should also be able to demonstrate an enlarged appreciation of the distinctiveness of European cultural contexts but also areas of commonality, as well as current political challenges facing Europe internationally.
Furthermore, students should come away from this seminar with a new set of conceptual models, practical and analytic tools to make use of in thinking about this complex and rich body of art.
Students will achieve these learning outcomes through close reading of primary and secondary material, seminar discussions based around prescribed texts and seminar papers on specific topics, and performance and curatorial workshops. In addition to film screening, performance recordings will be used to illustrate the theatrical dimensions of the plays. Weekly preparation prior to each seminar, based on set readings, will be crucial.

Transferable skills

teamwork, technical ability, creativity, time management, organisation, communication, discipline