*Writing the Body: Women in Performance From the 60’s to the Present

This course explores how women have used performance to challenge historic constructions of femininity and the objectification of women’s bodies. For this purpose, each week students will critically engage in the discussion of one or more artists assisted by accompanying theoretical sources. How women have used performance as a site of political and social intervention will be also analyzed. Discussions will focus both on the performative strategies and on the writerly performances displayed by the artists and theorists under consideration. In order to analyze these performances, the course will outline French feminists writing of the body of the 1970s and 1980s. then proceed to consider the critiques of essentialism and eurocentrism that appeared in later debates all the while tracking women’s performance art works. considering how performance is also a site embedded in a power structure, students will examine the politics behind art making and the politics that art makes. they will engage with a wide range of performance practices and performance spaces, from the theater, galleries, museums to fashion runway, public squares and streets, and cyber space.