Introductory description

Ways of Doing aims to develop your critically creative thinking, writing, and practice, in dialogue with real-world issues. Throughout the module you’ll engage with different types of performance, theory, practical workshops, and the methods which draw them together. The module seeks to show you new ways of doing research and practice to help you think about the real-world applicability of your work. It will ask you how you want to intervene in the world. You’ll be invited to share your ideas, in response to the module material, and to experiment with them in “D.I.Y” practical sessions. Ways of Doing will also prepare you for your third-year independent research project which will take the form of either a practice-based or a written dissertation. The assessments will challenge you as research-practitioners to think critically about HOW you want to work. What do you want to say? What forms and methods will help you do this? And, critically, why.

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.

Week 1 “Are you theory or practice?”
Weeks 2-4 Estrangement and Exile
Week 5: D.I.Y. Stage the Scenes/Interventions
Weeks 6-9 Pain & Performance Art?
Week 10: D.I.Y. Pain-points

Spring

Week 1: Writing Workshop (?)
Weeks 2-4: Climate Crisis & Community Theatre)
Week 5: D.I.Y.
Week 7: Let’s Get Ethical
Weeks 8-10: Research & Rehearsals.

Learning outcomes

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

• demonstrate that they understand what is needed to work across disciplines and modalities,
• interrogate how artists, activists, etc., are engaging in an interdisciplinary and interrogative way with theories and practices that address contemporary issues and concerns; and
• demonstrate these competencies in the ways they choose to engage specific theories, aesthetics and modes of performance in their written and practical work.

Indicative reading list

Aldrich, John H. (2014) Interdisciplinarity (Oxford University Press: New York).
Byron, E (ed.) (2018) Performing Interdisciplinarity (Routledge: London).
Callard, Felicity and Fitzgerald, Des. (2015) 'Introduction: Not Another Book about Interdisciplinarity.' in, Rethinking Interdisciplinarity across the Social Sciences and Neurosciences (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke).
Cheah, Pheng (2006) Inhuman Condition: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cox, Emma (2017) “Processional Aesthetics and Irregular Transit: Envisioning Refugees in Europe”, Theatre Journal, vol. 69, no. 4. Pp 477-49
Darbellay, Frederic, Moody, Zoe, Lubart, Todd (eds.) (2017) Creativity, Design Thinking and Interdisciplinarity (Springer: Singapore).
Ehrenreich, Barbara and Ariel Russell Hochschild (2002) Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Henry.
Graff, Harvey J. (2015) 'The Problem of Interdisciplinarity in Theory and Practice over Time.' In Undisciplining Knowledge : Interdisciplinarity in the Twentieth Century (John Hopkins University Press: Maryland).
Gray, Margaret (2014) Labor and the Locavore: the making of a comprehensive food ethic.
Haedicke, Susan (2021) Performing Farmscapes. Palgrave Macmillan. (Forthcoming in 2021).
Harvest of Shame’. (1960) [TV programme] CBS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJTVF_dya7E
Hutchison, Yvette. (2013) South African Performance and Archives of Memory. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
Jestrovic, Silvija (2016) ‘The Maid Vanishes’, Lateral: special issue Leveraging Justice. (November) http://csalateral.org/wp/archive/issue/5-2
Jones, Simon. (2009) ‘The Courage of Complementarity: Practice-as-Research as a Paradigm Shift in Performance Studies’. In Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen. Eds. Ludivine Allegue, Simon Jones, Baz Kershaw and Angela Piccini. Palgrave Macmillan. pp.19-32.
Kapur, Anuradha and Ari Sitas. Dark Bodies (video/performance recording)
Klein Julie Thompson. (2017) "Typologies of Interdisciplinarity: The Boundary Work of Definition." In. Robert, Frodeman (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (2nd Ed) (Oxford University Press: Oxford)
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. (1984) The postmodern condition: a report on knowledge (Manchester University Press: Manchester).
Mitchell, Don (2013) ‘Dead Labor and the Political Economy of Landscape - California Living, California Dying’. In Handbook of Cultural Geography. Eds Kay Anderson, Mona Domosh, Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift. Sage Publications Ltd. (e-book)
Nelson, Robin. (2013) Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances.
Palgrave Macmillan. Chapter 2: ‘From Practitioner to Practitioner-Researcher’, pp. 23-47.
University of California Press. “Introduction: Is Local Food and Ethical Alternative?’ (e-book)
Patel, Raj. (2007) Stuffed and Starved: From Farm to Fork: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. Portobello Books.
Rice, Alan. (2012) Creating memorials, building identities: the politics of memory in the Black Atlantic. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Rose, Mitch. (2006) ‘Gathering Dreams of Presence: a project for the cultural landscape’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24: 537-554.
Schaffer, Simon (2013) 'How disciplines look', in Andrew Born Barry, Georgina (eds.), Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences (Routledge: London).
Schechner, Richard (2017) Performance Studies: An Introduction (Routledge: London).
Websites on Wheatfield: A Confrontation, A Field of Wheat, and The Milking Parlour, and Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

Research element

Students are required to interrogate the methods and forms of other disciplines and real-world contexts and the ways in which these engage with performance

Interdisciplinary

The module is predicated on interdisciplinary working

Subject specific skills

Interdisciplinary working, critical analysis, creative practice

Transferable skills

Critical thinking
Problem solving
Active lifelong learning
Communication (verbal and written)
Teamwork and working effectively with others
Information literacy (research skills)
Citizenship (local and global)
Ethical values
Professionalism
Organisational awareness