Modernism, Performance and the Avant-Garde

The module is designed to give students the opportunity to study the emergence of experimental performance practice in the early twentieth century. The module will take a historiographical approach to materials, framing its investigations with theoretical discussion of two specific historiographical terms: ‘modernism’ and ‘the avant-garde.’ As such, the module will seek to address the cultural and historical conditions of the emergence of performance art, while at the same time provoking critical reflection on dominant analytic frameworks and narratives. The aim, thereby, is to enable an understanding of the contexts of production and reception of this work (both in its own moment, and the later moments of its academic appropriation), and suggest possibilities for the re-imagining of its significance.