Teaching
Sample Course Descriptions
Intro to Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies
An introductory course to theatre and performance with a focus on the body. How does the body perform, both on stage and in the everyday? How do different bodies come into contact with one another through performance? This course examines a wide range of theatre and performance, from 20th century world fairs and Broadway musicals to K-pop cover dance and public protests. We will discuss not only how performance shapes and constructs social hierarchies (such as race, gender, and sexuality), but also how feminist, queer, trans, and/or artists of color stage refusals and build alternative worlds in the face of injustice.
Asian American Theatre and Film
A survey on Asian American film, theatre, and performance. From the repetitions of Orientalist fantasies such as Miss Saigon to contemporary performance arts, this course explores how “Asian America” is performed, contested, and embodied on stage, screen, as well as in the everyday life. We consider “Asian America” as both a capacious identity category that includes South, Southeast, and East Asian diasporic communities, and a set of diverse lived experiences that produce crucial knowledge, strategies, and ways of being to the world. We will explore themes including labor and migration, empire and militarism, adoption and displacement, gender and sexuality, Asian-Indigenous and Afro-Asian relations. This course will also offer an introduction to the field of Asian American cultural studies.
Gender Performance
Is our gender a performance? How did gender identities in contemporary Chinese societies such as “dagongmei” (female migrant workers), “little fresh meat” (sissy boys), and “tomboy” emerge? How does performance consolidate, construct, and disrupt our gender disciplines?
Gender Performance is an interdisciplinary course that examines contemporary gender, sex, and sexuality through the lens of performance studies. We will engage with late 20th century and early 21st century cultural productions across Sinophone, East Asian, and Euro-American context such as film, theatre, dance, music, and performance art. Topics include: modernity, pop culture, nationalism, intersectionality, labor, migration, and Indigeneity.
Performance as Practice
Performance as Practice is an introductory studio-based course to approach the practice of making performance. From staged plays and performance arts to theatre for social change and everyday life, we will explore how we are already performing in our lives as well as the ways we could use performance to activate the spaces we move through. We will pay attention to how artists act, perform, entertain, resist, heal, repair, and build communities through performance practices. How does one create an action? How does one use performative strategies to engage with and challenge hierarchies of racial and gendered differences? How does one connect artistic practices and social activism? These performance methods include breaths, games, image theater, gestures, movements, and documentary performances, etc. Throughout the course, we will manifest these methods through embodied activities as well as solo and collaborative performance projects.
As Teaching Assistant or Course Assistant:
In the Flesh: Race, Sex, Performance, Skin
Intro to Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora
Foundations of Performance