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CS92PROD
Techniques of the Liar: Performance, Artifice, Fraud

CHUM 306
Fall 2020 not offered
Crosslisting: FGSS 305, THEA 306
Course Cluster and Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate, Queer Studies

This seminar is a cultural and intellectual history of fraudulence, fiction, and faking it. We will explore both specific performance practices as well as theorizations of artifice, fraud, and authenticity. Topics will include illusion, ventriloquism, and sleight of hand; mimetic acting and the manufacture of "emotion"; dance technique and the concealment of effort; and musical improvisation and the politics of invention. We will also consider the complexities of drag, camp, and minstrelsy and historicize their surrounding discourses, centering the contributions of feminist, queer, and critical race studies. Looking at a range of (predominantly U.S.-based) practices from the mid-19th century to the present, we will consider how artifice and theatricality have been historically reviled as qualities inherent to femininity and queerness, respectively; how "authenticity" is both gendered and racialized; and how hiding, fabulation, exaggeration, and duplicity have also offered means of freedom or resistance.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA CHUM
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: None

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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