Love and Capitalism: Honors Seminar
This course explores dramatic representations and performances of love and intimacy in the age of capital. The rise of capitalism gave birth to new configurations of romantic desire—from the bourgeois ideal of marrying for love to the bohemian experiments in free love. Theatre was central to these evolving ideologies and intimate rebellions. Beginning with modern drama and continuing through contemporary performance, we will examine how artists have shaped, provoked, and complicated their audiences’ understandings of love within shifting socio-economic contexts. We’ll pay particular attention to the parallel emergence of neoclassical economics and psychology in the late nineteenth century—a period often referred to as the first sexual revolution (1870-1910)—when it became clear that economic forces and erotic desires were, and remain, deeply entangled.

Comedy: History and Theory
This course will explore the history and theories of comedy and humor from antiquity to the present day. What makes us laugh and why? What are some cultural differences in humor perception? Is comedy a conservative or politically progressive theatrical genre? Which material is appropriate for comedy, and which is not? We will trace the development of a range of comic theories, paying attention to comedy’s connections to philosophy, politics, economics, and other arts.

Anton Chekhov
This course introduces students to the depth and breadth of Anton Chekhov’s dramatic oeuvre. We will read Chekhov’s vaudevilles, jokes, early plays, and the four great plays of his artistic maturity: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. We will engage in careful dramaturgical analysis of the plays themselves and explore groundbreaking productions of Chekhov’s work both in Russia and around the world. Students will also study the historical and cultural context of nineteenth-century Europe and Chekhov’s complicated relationship with Konstantin Stanislavsky.

Contemporary European Drama
This course introduces students to major trends in Modern and Contemporary European Drama with a focus on text-based theatre. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to exploring drama written by Europe’s leading playwrights from the late nineteenth century to the present today by putting their work in conversation with aesthetic, political, historical, and geographical issues of their time. Special attention will be paid to the idea of “Europe,” its colonial past, and neocolonial present. Works by Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Beckett, Kane, Petrushevskaya, Norén, and Fosse are among those to be studied.