Activism, Performance, Social Movements

This seminar examines how activism shapes the political process through performance, and how social movements often spread by theatrical means. We start our exploration with the notion of "the publics" as introduced by the twentieth-century German philosopher Jürgen Habermas and then expand our view of this concept to the contemporary political setting. We look at both how elected representatives use theatrical tropes to shape their public personas, and also how popular protests stage large-scale public interventions. How might performance as a series of citational strategies allow us to think about the political process?  How do we assess the success or failure of a tactic in a social movement?

We will draw heavily on the works of feminist scholars like bell hooks, Judith Butler, Kimberle Crenshaw,  and Peggy Phelan, to discuss movements such as ACT UP, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo. Equally, we will look at histories of student activism such as the 1968 Morningside Park gym construction, campus anti-apartheid actions, Carry That Weight at Columbia and Barnard, and Friday School Climate Strike and March for our Lives. Students reflect on their own histories or experiences with activism, as personal involvement and/or politics of the places they come from. Through the semester students are exposed to various techniques of protest performance including zines, podcasts, art campaigns and poetry circles. Based on shared interests and affinities, students work in groups to class devise activist performances as a final project.