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Dangerous Women

ENGL 256.601
instructor(s):
M 6-9
Fulfills Distributional Course in Arts & Letters
Crosslisted with: THAR 279 601, WSTD 279 601
Theatre began as a form that excluded women entirely. The plays of ancient Greece and Elizabethan England were written and performed only by men, beginning a long tradition of theatre that represented women only from male perspectives. Has that tradition been so dominant for so long that women's voices on stage are still a novelty? This course focuses on a wide range of plays and performances by and about women; the work we read (and view) will evidence artistic attempts to represent women's lives, experiences and perspectives on the stage. Among the issues encountered and examined in these works are the roles of love, sexuality, friendship, career, community, marriage, motherhood, family, and feminism in women's lives - as well as the economic and political position(s) of women in society. The course will also offer contextual background on feminist theatre history, theory, and literature, the diverse (and divergent) creative efforts of female artists to use live performance as a means of creating social and political change.
fulfills requirements