Performance Studies

Communication Studies 3760

Instructor:

Dr. Kelly S. Taylor

Office:

245 Terrill Hall

Course Description

COMM 3760 is designed as an extension of COMM 2060. As such, it introduces students to a wider variety of forms of performance. Whereas 2060 requires students to perform the work of noted literary artists, 3760 begins with that form as a foundation for creating performance texts as well as performances that feature your attitude and perspective. Over the course of the semester, we will be exploring together the concepts of performance as reading, performance as interpretation, and performance as criticism. The theories of Robert Scholes will serve as the basis for our explorations.

In addition to this fundamental aspect of the course, you will also learn the fundamentals of performance criticism. Using Scholes as our guide for this activity as well, we will examine the ways in which we all read, interpret, and criticize performance texts and attempt to sharpen those skills. Pursuant to these ends, you will participate in assessing and evaluating your own work and the work of your peers through self assessments and evaluations as well as assessments and evaluations of the work of your peers.

Required Text

Robert Scholes, Textual Power, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Methods of Evaluation

Mid Term Exam	20%
Final Exam	20%
Performance #1	20%
Performance #2	20%
Performance #3	20%

Makeup Work

Any classwork missed should be turned in immediately following the student's return to class. There is a 2 point per weekday penalty for lateness -- regardless of the student's excuse. Missed performances cannot be made up.

Attendance

You will be dropped from the class roll after three unexcused absences. Excused absences require a note from the Dean of Students or UNT Health Center.

Academic Integrity

All students are expected to conform to the University's code of conduct. Students who cheat or plagiarize will fail the assignment concerned, will be turned in to the University's Judicial Committee, and may receive a failing grade for the course.

Access Policy

All effort will be made to provide reasonable accommodations to students with disabilities. Students wishing to self-identify should register on the third floor of the Student Union by the third day of the semester.

Grading Scale

100-93 = A
92-85 = B
84-77 = C
76-69 = D
69 and below = F

Summary of Assignments

Performance #1 -- Performance as Reading.: In this assignment, you select a work of short fiction from the sources on reserve in the library and analyze the speaker, scene, audience, and purpose. On the basis of your analysis, you will create a performance concept and perform a reading of the piece. Because of time limitations, you may be performing only a portion of the story. Your analysis, however, should be based on the story as a whole. Your performance concept need only address the scene you will perform. See the attached assignment sheet for more details on the analysis component of this assignment.

Grade breakdown for this performance assignment will be as follows:

Performance		40%
Analysis		30%
Performance #1		15%
Self-Assessment		15%

Performance #2 -- Performance as Interpretation.: In this assignment, you are asked to some thinking about way in which you read. Theories of intertextuality suggest that we read every text in relationship to other texts. As we read, we create a relationship between the text we are reading and the infinite network of knowledge it might be related to in our minds: our past experiences, songs, television, commercials, films, books, poems, family stories, myths, parables, ect. Most of the time we do not focus on this "extrinsic" intertextuality; we take it for granted. The Interpretive Performance Project asks you to do some specific thinking about the connections you make as you read and to make these connections concrete in your performance.

Part of the challenge of this assignment is that it requires you to state in very specific terms what your think the text you have chosen to work with is "about" in general or universal terms. For instance, we engage in interpretation when we move from saying "The Color Purple is about a poor, black woman, Celie, growing up in the rural South" to "The Color Purple is a re-telling of 'The Ugly Duckling' story." Making one of the implicit themes of your text explicit and demonstrating how that theme is repeated in a variety of cultural texts is the goal of this assignment.

See the attached assignment sheet for more details on the analysis component of this assignment.

Grade breakdown for this performance assignment will be as follows:

Grade from Instructor		50%
Grade from Performer		20%
Critiques on Others		15%
Self-Assessment		15%

Performance #3 -- Performance as Reading.: In this assignment, you are asked to create a text that performs your own judgment on behalf of or against some aspect of a literary text. In other words, you will create a performance that "talks back" to the values and attitudes in a literary or cultural text. A critical performance always operates in an oppositional manner. Your critical performance speaks not on your own behalf, but on behalf of a group or class of people for whom you wish to speak. While your criticism will begin with personal response, it is not simply a personal response.

This assignment begins with a literary text as a point of departure and asks you to collect related texts (not necessarily intertexts as we defined them in the last assignment) to aid you in the creation of a seamless intertext. As a seamless intertext, your performance text will combine the various texts you have collected. However, the texts will not necessarily call attention to themselves as separate entities.

See the attached assignment sheet for more details on the analysis component of this assignment.

Grade breakdown for this performance assignment will be as follows: