Teacher
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RAPETTI Valentina
(syllabus)
TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN DRAMA: PLAYS IN CONTEXT
This course aims to provide students with a thorough knowledge of twentieth-century American drama, some of its most influential playwrights, its distinctive aesthetic and stylistic eclecticism, and its recurrent themes, metaphors, and motifs. Students will read six pivotal plays written by American and African American playwrights between 1941 and 1993, and they will explore the ways in which theatre, drama, and performance have contributed to the construction and deconstruction of an American identity. Although close reading and analysis of dramatic texts will be the main focus of the course, due attention will be paid to the theatrical, cultural, and historical contexts in which each play was conceived and produced, so that students will be able to understand American theatre history as a significant part of modern American cultural history. Besides encountering and learning to recognize a range of different dramatic styles, students will also examine the conflicting representations of American identity within each play, and will investigate the ways in which the six plays may connect with each other and with the broader American culture and experience.
(reference books)
Testi e edizioni richieste (è necessario utlizzare esclusivamente le edizioni indicate. Qualora non doveste trovarle, siete pregati di contattarmi):
- Eugene O’Neill, A Long Day’s Journey into Night, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2014. ISBN: 978-0300186413
- Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (Viking Critical Library), edited by Gerald Weales, Penguin Books, New York, 1996. ISBN-13: 978-0140247732
- August Wilson, Fences, Theatre Communications Group, New York, 2007. (provided by instructor in PDF format)
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, introduction by Robert Bray, New Directions, 2000. ISBN-10: 9780811214049. ISBN-13: 978-0811214049
- Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, Vintage Books, New York, 1994. ISBN: 978-1408140901
- Anna Deavere Smith, Fires in the Mirror, Anchor Books, New York, 1993. ISBN-10: 9780385470148. ISBN-13: 978-0385470148
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