Course Description
Intertextuality and Performance
is designed to make students aware of the myriad relationships that exist among
texts—both in the reading process and in the creative process.
The course begins with the idea that the reading of texts is a complex
process whereby readers engage in an act of creation rather than in a simple act
of decoding. Drawing on their vast knowledge of reexisting (cultural,
social, political, literary, extraliterary) texts, readers make meanings
rather than discover meanings in words and images. The course then seeks to make the unconscious process of
intertextuality overt by asking students, through a series of performances, to
examine the way they read and to create new intertextual performances by leaning
on, questioning, parodying, rewriting, and critiquing existing works.
Course Objectives:
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To understand the process of
textualization as it applies to the reading process;
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To read works intertextually,
i.e., to identify other texts that inform one’s reading of given works;
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To examine how the process of
making meanings is influenced by preexisting cultural, social, political,
literary, and extraliterary texts;
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To produce performance texts
using principles of intertextuality; and
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To create performance texts
that:
Respectfully recreate
preexisting texts
Question and subvert preexisting texts, and
Bring multiple preexisting texts together in the creation of new texts.
