ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

What are the limits of theater? Is alienation a necessary part of the experience of theater, and at what point does spectacle become surveillance? Is theatricality necessarily dehumanizing, or are there ways of theorizing theatricality that would allow for a reaffirmation of our humanity? And how might concepts of catharsis, performance/performativity, spectacle, parody, irony, and dramatic monologue be applied outside of the traditional discourse on the theater? The aim of this seminar will be to explore ideas of theatricality in relation to politics, gender, race, and history, and through examinations of theoretical considerations by Marx, Freud, Benjamin, Foucault, and Mulvey, among others.

Friday, March 24

Gillian Pierce, Boston University
“Ironic Consciousness and Theatricality in Diderot’s ‘Paradoxe sur le comedien’ and Baudelire’s ‘De l’essence du rire’”
Tiffany Brooks, Florida State University
“Holy Terror (or) Plight of the Living Dead: The Theatricality of Horror in the Wakefield Cycle”
Marla Dean, University of Montevallo
“Mimos Troupes and Western Theatre History”
Miguel Munoz, University of Kansas
“How Killing the Others Can Help Theatre Theoreticians”

Saturday, March 25

Aynne Kokas, University of California, Los Angeles
“The Lady from Shanghai: Cinematic Forms of the Body in New Sensationist Avant-Garde Literature”
Joseph Kugelmass, University of California, Irvine
“States of Exhaustion: The Critique of Catharsis in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World”
Yuwen Hsiung, Purdue University
“Brecht and the Chinese Xieyi Theatre”
Travis Landry, University of Washington
“Alienation as Recorded by Serafino Gubbio, Pirandello’s Authentic Cameraman”