ENGL 216 - Modern Drama: Text and Performance after 1800

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Study of modern dramatic texts and their embodiment both on the page and the stage. Authors, critical and theoretical approaches, dramatic genres, historical coverage, and themes may vary from year to year.

Topic 2022/23a: Dysfunctional Families. This course explores modern American plays that present debacles in the private sphere and its most widely accepted, codified, and institutionalized social manifestation: the family. As a site of incessant conflicts and negotiations between the individual and the other, and between the intimate and the public, the family offers an ideal framework and subject matter for commentary on a variety of moral and social issues. Through a brief overview of contemporary American drama, this course pays attention to the vestiges of the American Dream in a range of dramatic representations of dysfunctional families. As a survey with a special focus, the course discusses plays by Akhtar, Albee, Drury, Hansberry, Hwang, Karam, Letts, Mac, Miller, Parks, Shepard, and Wilson. We also read selected texts about the plays and the role and significance of family in the 20^th century. Zoltán Márkus

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS