Zora Neale Hurston & Black Performance

This course begins with focused attention on select plays of Zora Neale Hurston and her critical writing on performance, then takes ZNH’s aesthetics, politics, and provocations as a lens to study U.S. Black performance, broadly defined.  We will consider the contexts in which Hurston pursued a career as playwright and theatremaker, and the influences that found their way into her plays including spiritual narratives and voodoo.  We will turn our attention to key writers of the Harlem Renaissance to learn where ZNH first made her mark, and the milieu to which she ultimately turned her back.  Each week’s reading/viewing will include primary sources (ZNH’s plays and dramaturgical statements) as well as scholarly criticism of those works or genre.  The final weeks of the course will take up Black dance performance from the early 20th century, and finish with more recent plays.  In addition to short weekly reading responses, students will complete a long-form critical paper that may, if they choose, include a creative element.