TEACHING
Undergraduate Courses at Baruch College
Immigration on Stage and Screen
What impact have immigrants had on the development of American theater, television, film, and performance art? How does the vocabulary of performance help us to understand how immigrants and exiles form new identities - onstage and off? Topics include the theater of Irish, Italian, African, Russian, Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, and Hispanic immigrants to the United States, theater of exile, immigrant theater and film in Europe, South Africa, India, and Brazil, immigration and Hollywood, performance and the construction of identity, and contemporary artistic responses to immigration.
Cross-listed in Theater and Jewish Studies
Applied Theater
This course is an introduction to applied theater, a field that uses theater as a medium for problem solving, education, activism, therapy, and civic engagement. Applied theater approaches theater not merely as a tool for entertainment but as a way to serve others. We will study key forms of Applied theater, including Playback, drama therapy, Theater of the Oppressed, prison theater, and other approaches to creating theater with communities for a purpose. Students will participate in a collaborative, community-based theater project.
Home in Exile: Creative Expression and the Diasporic Experience
How do people cope with leaving their homelands? How do cultures survive and change under the pressures of migration, dispersal, and exile? This seminar examines the experience of diaspora as expressed culturally through music, food, clothing, theater, film, literature, and internet culture. We will begin by defining the meaning of ‘diaspora’ and its relationship to other concepts such as race, nation, cultural identity, and migration. The term ‘diaspora’ suggests the dispersal of people from their homeland, which often has multiple meanings. For some people, this homeland might be a place they have never visited or have no real physical connection to. For others, the homeland could be a place that they have constant contact with through travel, communication, and family members. The second half of the course will consider different forms of cultural expression of the diasporic experience through a comparative lens. Though the seminar will consider a wide range of diasporic experiences, we will primary focus on two paradigmatic case studies: the Jewish diaspora and the African diaspora. Readings in diaspora studies across the disciplines (including anthropology, sociology, history, political science, comparative literature, geography, theater history, performance studies, and musicology) are paired with examples of food, music, clothing, literature, performances, and other cultural artifacts that exemplify particular diasporic traits, themes, or ideas. Feit Interdisciplinary Seminar.
Fundamentals of Directing
An introduction to the fundamentals of directing for the stage. Working with acting students, students will develop key directing skills including visual composition, script analysis and preparation, collaboration with actors and designers, and blocking and rehearsal techniques. This course will also place the craft of theater directing in its historical context and acquaint students with different directing styles and techniques from around the world.
Theater History
This course offers the student an exploration of the origins of theatre and overviews of major world theatre production practices and dramatic literature drawn from Western, African, and Asian traditions. The place of theatre in society and its potential as a cultural force are examined within the context of selected historical periods.
Multilingual Literary Translation Workshop
Translation is a performative art that brings literary works of all kinds to new audiences across linguistic and cultural differences, and, in that act of re-creation, creates something new. Taught by faculty from the Modern Languages and Theater departments, this course will place special attention on theories of translation as performance. Bilingual students of varied linguistic backgrounds will study readings in the history, theory, and practice of literary translation, and will choose, polish, and complete their own translation projects from other languages into English. Over the course of the semester, students will meet with leading figures in the field of translation, attend plays and readings that deal with the subject of translation, and propose and complete translations of fiction, poetry, or dramatic texts, with suggestions and guidance from the instructors and feedback from classmates.
American Jews and the Performing Arts
This course explores how Jews adapted to American life and constructed American-Jewish identities through the performing arts (theater, film, television, dance, and music), particularly in New York City. Emphasis will be placed on American Jewish performers from the early 20th century to the present, including artists such as the Marx Brothers, Fanny Brice, Rogers and Hammerstein, Stella Adler, Cecil B. DeMille, Jerome Robbins, Sidney Lumet, Joey Grey, Stephen Sondheim, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, J. J. Abrams, Mel Brooks, Leonard Nimoy, Paula Vogel, the Coen Brothers, Jill Soloway, Rebecca Bloom, and others. Students will discuss how these artists explore aspects of the American Jewish experience (immigration, community, religion, language, food, the Holocaust, etc.) via the performing arts.
Cross-listed in theater and Jewish studies.
Introduction to Theater Arts
This course is an introduction to the art of the theater. We will examine how theatrical productions are developed via artistic collaborations between writers, directors, actors, designers, producers, and audience members. Students will read plays and theater reviews, attend theatrical productions, and participate in workshops and conversations with guest artists. Attendance of professional performances in New York City outside of class is a required part of the course.
Introduction to Theater Arts: Hybrid
This hybrid online and face-to-face course is an introduction to the art of the theater. We will examine how theatrical productions are developed via artistic collaborations between writers, actors, directors, designers, producers, and audience members. Students will read plays and theatre reviews, attend theatrical productions, and participate in workshops and conversations with guest artists. Hybrid online/in-person activities and assignments will allow students to interact with performers and other theater professionals, both locally and internationally, and to interact with of New York’s legendary theater scene.
Graduate Courses
Rootless Cosmopolitans: Yiddish Theater & the Diasporic Imagination (Doctoral Program in Theater, CUNY GC)
How have the experiences of migration, exile, and dislocation intersected with theatre history, aesthetics, and practice? In this course, we will investigate how theatre is produced and how it functions in diasporic contexts, with a particular focus on the history of the Yiddish stage. This seminar is intended both as a historical survey of Yiddish theatre history and as an introduction to diaspora studies for the theatre historian. Readings in diaspora theory across the disciplines (including anthropology, sociology, history, political science, comparative literature, geography, theatre history, performance studies, and musicology) are paired with plays that exemplify particular diasporic traits, themes, or aesthetic sensibilities, with a special focus on Yiddish theatre as a paradigmatic case study. Topics include diaspora aesthetics, multilingualism, double consciousness, theatre of the subaltern, hybridity, nostalgia, adaptation, and diasporic performance in the digital age and readings include plays by Avrom Goldfaden, Jacob Gordin, Peretz Hirschbein, Y.L. Peretz, Alter Kacyzne, Sh. Ansky, H. Leivick, and Dovid Pinsky. We will consider the international, cross-cultural success of plays like The Dybbuk and The Golem alongside historiographic questions about the location of diasporic performance traditions in theatre history. Requirements: Weekly reading assignments, research proposal, oral presentation, 15-20 page research paper.
Dissertation Writing Workshop (Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research, Harvard University)
A two-week intensive workshop for advanced graduate students who are writing their dissertations. The majority of sessions are devoted to workshopping dissertation chapters. Additional topics include dissertation writing techniques, planning for dissertation completion, academic publishing, grant writing, and preparing for the academic job market.
Rootless Cosmopolitans: Yiddish Theater & the Diasporic Imagination (Doctoral Program in Theater, CUNY GC)
How have the experiences of migration, exile, and dislocation intersected with theatre history, aesthetics, and practice? In this course, we will investigate how theatre is produced and how it functions in diasporic contexts, with a particular focus on the history of the Yiddish stage. This seminar is intended both as a historical survey of Yiddish theatre history and as an introduction to diaspora studies for the theatre historian. Readings in diaspora theory across the disciplines (including anthropology, sociology, history, political science, comparative literature, geography, theatre history, performance studies, and musicology) are paired with plays that exemplify particular diasporic traits, themes, or aesthetic sensibilities, with a special focus on Yiddish theatre as a paradigmatic case study. Topics include diaspora aesthetics, multilingualism, double consciousness, theatre of the subaltern, hybridity, nostalgia, adaptation, and diasporic performance in the digital age and readings include plays by Avrom Goldfaden, Jacob Gordin, Peretz Hirschbein, Y.L. Peretz, Alter Kacyzne, Sh. Ansky, H. Leivick, and Dovid Pinsky. We will consider the international, cross-cultural success of plays like The Dybbuk and The Golem alongside historiographic questions about the location of diasporic performance traditions in theatre history. Requirements: Weekly reading assignments, research proposal, oral presentation, 15-20 page research paper.
Dissertation Writing Workshop (Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research, Harvard University)
A two-week intensive workshop for advanced graduate students who are writing their dissertations. The majority of sessions are devoted to workshopping dissertation chapters. Additional topics include dissertation writing techniques, planning for dissertation completion, academic publishing, grant writing, and preparing for the academic job market.
Courses in Development
Plays from Hell: Religious Foundations of the Theater
Why do so many theatrical traditions around the world have their roots in religious practice? In what ways can religious ritual be understood as a kind of performance? How have religious institutions approached the professional theater throughout history? Can theater effectively bridge religious divides?
This seminar will examine the rich and often fraught relationship between theater, spirituality, and religion from the Greeks to the present. In particular, our readings will focus on “plays from hell,” i.e. dramas that stage the afterlife. We will begin our seminar by considering how Greek, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Yoruba, Muslim, and Hindu dramatists have employed the theater as a productive site for religious commentary and debate. The history of religious bans on theater and performance will be addressed vis-à-vis the persistence of dramas depicting religious rituals and ideas. The second part of the seminar will explore the legacy of particularly dominant religious stories and narrative structures in modern drama.
Wandering Jews: Travel and Cultural Transmission in Modern Jewish Culture
This course considers the role of travel and travelers in the construction and dissemination of modern Jewish culture, from the 19th century to the present. Jewish travelers often acted as agents of cultural transmission, bringing books, music, and cultural artifacts across national and continental borders. This course explores representations of travel across Jewish culture, including selections from Hebrew and Yiddish literature, folksongs, plays, memoirs, and films. Topics include the image of the traveler in modern Jewish literature, travelogues, klezmer music, traveling Yiddish and Hebrew theater companies, Israeli backpacking, Holocaust and shtetl tourism, American Jewish travel to Israel, and contemporary reflections on travel in modern Jewish culture.
Syllabi available upon request
Plays from Hell: Religious Foundations of the Theater
Why do so many theatrical traditions around the world have their roots in religious practice? In what ways can religious ritual be understood as a kind of performance? How have religious institutions approached the professional theater throughout history? Can theater effectively bridge religious divides?
This seminar will examine the rich and often fraught relationship between theater, spirituality, and religion from the Greeks to the present. In particular, our readings will focus on “plays from hell,” i.e. dramas that stage the afterlife. We will begin our seminar by considering how Greek, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Yoruba, Muslim, and Hindu dramatists have employed the theater as a productive site for religious commentary and debate. The history of religious bans on theater and performance will be addressed vis-à-vis the persistence of dramas depicting religious rituals and ideas. The second part of the seminar will explore the legacy of particularly dominant religious stories and narrative structures in modern drama.
Wandering Jews: Travel and Cultural Transmission in Modern Jewish Culture
This course considers the role of travel and travelers in the construction and dissemination of modern Jewish culture, from the 19th century to the present. Jewish travelers often acted as agents of cultural transmission, bringing books, music, and cultural artifacts across national and continental borders. This course explores representations of travel across Jewish culture, including selections from Hebrew and Yiddish literature, folksongs, plays, memoirs, and films. Topics include the image of the traveler in modern Jewish literature, travelogues, klezmer music, traveling Yiddish and Hebrew theater companies, Israeli backpacking, Holocaust and shtetl tourism, American Jewish travel to Israel, and contemporary reflections on travel in modern Jewish culture.
Syllabi available upon request
