Why were Chekhov's plays condemned by both Czarists and Revolutionaries? Why was Oscar Wilde imprisoned? (Not just for the reason you think.) Why were Sarah Bernhardt and other "Jewess" divas at once beloved and reviled? Why were Asian and African cultures at once adulated, mocked, and subjugated? Why was Mahler charged with conducting German music in a "Negroid" manner? What did Hitler see on his few theatre outings, and why did he send the avant-garde dramatists, actos, directors, painters, designers, musicians, and filmmakers of his time to exile and death? The early modernist period was marked by explosive artistic innovations, along with deep anxiety over civilization's racial, sexual, gender, governmental, economic, and even biological "decay" or "degeneration," tying "mere" theatre and other, often lighthearted, performance and arts, in both content and form, to issues from chatty "gay" banter to Holocaust genocide. Materials might include: Gilbert & Sullivan's light opera Patience; transcripts of Oscar Wilde's "sodomy" trials; histories of the London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna stages, as well as cabarets, salons, cafes, and world expositions; plays and productions by Chekhov, Ibsen, Strindberg, Wilde, Symbolists, Futurists, Dadaists, Expressionists, and others; women's, "queer," exoticist, Jewish ghetto, concentration camp, and Nazi performance and arts; writings and critiques by Emile Zola, Henry James, and Hitler. Format: weekly lecture/seminar. Requirements: short weekly papers; group research presentations; two longer written projects; and a final exam. An optional research tour of NYC's Neue Galerie of decadent-era culture will be arranged. Prerequisite: one 100-level course in Theatre, English, Comparative Literature, or Art History; or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limit: 20. Preference to Theatre, English, and Comparative Literature, and Visual Arts majors.

Hour: SALAMENSKY