Admission requirements
The colloquium can be followed by Research Master students, who need to be inscribed as such at the LUICD. If there is room for other students , eg MA-students, they can apply by means of a letter of motivation with prof. dr. Frans-Willem Korsten, who will then decide whether they can participate
Description
The Colloquium will focus on the correlations and the differences between drama and theater, dramatization and theatricality. We will be reading theoretical texts from such diverse theorists as Aristotle, Tertullian, Leibniz, Diderot, Benjamin, Brecht, Artaud, Barthes, Deleuze, Bal, Bleeker, Burns, Van Eck, Fischer-Korsten, Lichte, Weber, Shapiro and Szondi.
After four weeks of discussing these texts, in two sessions per week, with chairing and preparation of the discussion by indivudual members, students will be asked to prepare a short presentation on a work of art in relation to the theories that have been discussed.
Course objectives
The major objective of the colloquium is to get thouroughly acquainted with important texts on the key concepts of drama, dramatization, theater and theatricality. At the end of the course students will be able to move independently and with confidence on, and across the borders between literature, theater and drama, and they will be able to handle the concepts of theatricality and dramatization in relation to different works of art (cinema, photography, paintings, architecture, etc.). Moreover, they will have been training their chairing and presentation skills.
Timetable
The course will start in the first week of November (week 44), with two three-hour sessions each week for four weeks in a row. Then we have a break of two weeks in order to prepare presentations that will take place on a one day meeting, Monday December 19th (week 51). See the Timetable
Mode of instruction
Lecture, Individual study of source materials, Preparation discussion, Discussion, Presentation
Assessment method
Assessment will concern a. the quality of participation in the discussion; b. the quality of discussion preparation and chairing; c. the quality of the final presentation
Blackboard
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Reading list
Aristotle, Poetics (selection) – Tertullian, Of Spectacles (online version) – Leibniz, Nomadology (selection) – Walter Benjamin, ‘Bert Brecht’ & ‘What is the Epic Theatre (II)’. Selected Writings 2 & 4. General ed. Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge Mass./London.Volume 2, 1999, pp. 365-371; Volume 4, 2003, pp. 302-311. – Bertolt Brecht, ‘The Modern Theatre is Epic Theatre’. In Brecht on Theatre: the Development of an Aesthetic. Ed. & transl. John Willet. London: Methuen, 1964, pp.
Mieke Bal, ‘Mise-en-scène’, in: Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2002, pp. 96-132. – Roland Barthes, ‘Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein’, in: Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text, Fontana, 1979, pp. 69-78. – Maaike Bleeker, ‘Walking the Landscape Stage’, in: Visuality in the Theatre: The Locus of Looking. Houndmilss, 2008, pp. 63-79. – Elizabeth Burns, Theatricality: A study of convention in the theatre and in social life. London, 1972, pp. 10-21. – Gilles Deleuze, ‘The Method of Dramatisation’; Paper presented to the Société française de Philosophie, 28 January 1967. Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie, vol. LXII, 1967, pp. 89-118. – Caroline van Eck & Stijn Bussels, ‘Introduction’, Art History Vol. 33, Nr. 2, March 2010, p. 11-25. – Josette Feral, ‘The Specificity of Theatrical Language’, SubStance Vol. 31, Nos. 2& 3, 2002, p. 94-109. – Erika Fischer-Lichte, ‘Theatrum vitae humanae’, in: Erika Fischer-Lichte, History of European drama en theatre, London, 2004, pp. 50-145. – Erika Fischer-Lichte, ‘Theatricality: A Key Concept in Theatre and Cultural Studies’ and ‘From Theatre to Theatricality—How to Construct Reality’, Theatre Research International, Vol. 20, Nr. 2, 85-89 and 97-105. – Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality. Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot, Chicago, 1980, pp. 1-35. – Frans-Willem Korsten, ‘Moments of Indecision, Sovereign Possibilities – Notes on the Tableau Vivant’. In Willemien Otten, Arjo Vanderjagt & Hent de Vries (Eds.), How the West Was Won. Essays on Literary Imagination, the Canon, and the Christian Middle Ages for Burcht Pranger. Leiden: Brill, 2010, pp 17-38. – Thomas Postlewait and Tracy C. Davis, ‘Theatricality: an introduction’, in: Thomas Postlewait and Tracy C. Davis (eds.), Theatricality, Cambridge, 2003, pp. 1-39. – Gary Shapiro, ‘Übersehen: Architecture and Excess in the Theater of Dionysos’; & ‘In the Twinkling of an Eye: Zarathustra on the Gaze and the Glance’, in: Archeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying. Chicago/London, 2003, pp. 127-156 & 157-192 + notes pp. 409-414. – Janet Martin Soskice, ‘Sight and Vision in Medieval Christian Thought’, in: Martin Jay, in: Teresa Brennan, Martin Jay (eds.), Vision in Context: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Sight, New York-London, 1996, pp. 29-43. – Peter Szondi and Harvey Mendelsohn, Tableau and Coup de Theatre: On the Social Psychology of Diderot’s Bourgeois Theatre. New Literary History, Vol. 11, No. 2, Literature/History/Social Action. (Winter, 1980), pp. 323-343.
Samuel Weber, ‘’Citability – of Gesture’. In Benjamin’s –abilities. Cambridge Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 2008, pp. 95-115.
Registration
Via uSis
Exchange and Study Abroad students, please see the Study in Leiden website for information on how to apply.