Module overview
Aims and Objectives
Learning Outcomes
Transferable and Generic Skills
Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:
- Write in a range of registers appropriate for different purposes and readerships
- Construct a reasoned, well written argument based on research and analysis of text
- Research a topic or issue independently
Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills
Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:
- Present arguments about dramatic literature that place it in a broad historical, cultural and theoretical context.
- Analyse the generic and formal strategies used by modern American playwrights
- Evaluate the relationship between playwrights and a number of theatre companies and directors
- Evaluate the efficacy of key theories and critical methods pertinent to analysis of dramatic texts
- Analyse plays for their visual, aural, performative and literary elements
- Evaluate how visual and aural components of performance combine to speak to their audiences and create emotional and cognitive impact
- Conduct independent research using tools and resources available via the library and the internet
Knowledge and Understanding
Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:
- scholarship that draws on a variety of critical approaches to explore the crucial issues informing American drama of this period
- the concept of drama as a composite and collaborative art form; a sense of a play-text as a blueprint for performance, a starting point for directors, actors, and designers
- a play-text as a blueprint for performance, a starting point for directors, actors, and designers
Syllabus
Learning and Teaching
Teaching and learning methods
Type | Hours |
---|---|
Lecture | 10 |
Tutorial | 2 |
Seminar | 10 |
Revision | 8 |
Preparation for scheduled sessions | 50 |
Teaching | 12 |
Wider reading or practice | 18 |
Completion of assessment task | 30 |
Follow-up work | 10 |
Total study time | 150 |
Resources & Reading list
Textbooks
Christopher B. Balme (2008). The Cambridge Introduction to Theater Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Jan Cohen-Cruz (2005). Local Acts: Community-Based Performance in the U.S.. New Brunswick, New Jersey, London: Rutgers UP.
David Krasner (2005). A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Marc Maufort (1995). Staging Difference: Cultural Pluralism in American Theater and Drama. New York: Peter Lang.
Jill Dolan (2005). The Feminist Spectator as Critic. University of Michigan Press.
Kerstin Schmidt (2005). The Theater of Transformation Postmodernism in American Drama. Rodopi.
(2010). Engaging Performance: Theater as Call and Response. NY: Routledge.
Martin Middeken, Peter Paul Schnierer et al. (2014). The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights. London, NY: Bloomsbury.
David Edgar (1999). State of Play. London: Faber.
Dominic Dromgoole (2000). The Full Room. London: Methuen.
Alison Forsyth and Chris Megson (2009). Get Real: Documentary Theater Past and Present. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Carol Martin (2010). Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
L. Bailey Mcdanie (2013). Constructing Maternal Performance in Twentieth-Century American Drama. Palgrave: Macmillan.
Jeffrey H. Richards and Heather S. Nathans, eds. (2014). The Oxford Handbook of American Drama. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
S.E. Wilmer (2004). Theater, Society and the Nation: Staging American Identities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Annette J Saddik (2007). Contemporary American Drama. Edinburgh University Press.
Ruby Cohn (1995). Anglo-American Interplay in Recent Drama. Cambridge University Press.
Angela C. Pao (2010). No Safe Spaces: Re-Casting Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality in American Theatre. University of Michigan Press.
Assessment
Assessment strategy
The assessment on this module comprises two essays: a mid-semester and a final essay.Summative
This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.
Method | Percentage contribution |
---|---|
Essay | 60% |
Essay | 40% |
Referral
This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.
Method | Percentage contribution |
---|---|
Essay | 100% |
Repeat
An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.
Method | Percentage contribution |
---|---|
Essay | 100% |
Repeat Information
Repeat type: Internal & External