ENGL3871: Contemporary Feminist Drama (2000-21)

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• To introduce students to current debates of feminism, queer theory, and issues of intersectionality in drama while raising nuanced awareness of the individual cultural backgrounds out of which these plays originate
• To cultivate a critical understanding of the specific nature and difference of literary and performance texts and their interactions
• To develop confidence in analytically close-reading dramatic texts regarding form as well as content and building skills in performance analysis.

• This module provides a wide-ranging and diverse critical introduction to Anglophone feminist drama of the twenty-first century. The course introduces students to current theoretical feminist debates and their application in drama and performance and their wider societal impact.
• The module content addresses questions and problems relating to feminist stances toward capitalism, cross-cultural solidarity, the exposition of the female body in the media, post-eco feminism, the intersections of feminism with LGBTQ* activism, feminism and ableism, and the role of women in the theatre industry.
• The module covers drama by key British playwrights (e.g. Alice Birch, Ella Hickson, Lucy Kirkwood, debbie tucker-green and Phoebe Waller-Bridge) as well as feminist works by Nigerian, American, Australian, Singaporean and South-African writers.
• The exploration of the plays formal innovation and social discourse is supported by reading of a number of important pre-2000 plays, e.g. by Caryl Churchill, Oscar Wilde and Henrik Ibsen to ground students understanding of how feminist debate in drama has historically evolved.
• Students will be exposed to theoretical texts by feminist and queer theatre scholars such as Lynette Goddard, Frances Babbage, Kim Solga and Jill Dolan alongside texts by cultural critics commenting on feminism such as Sarah Ahmed, Rafia Zakaria, Maggie Nelson, Hazel V. Carby and Donna Haraway.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Students will gain detailed understanding of play texts as literature in performance.
• Students will develop an awareness of feminist traditions, controversies, and interventions in dramatic literature.
• Students will be trained to pay specific attention to formal and theoretical issues required by dramatic texts (audience, semiotics, production).

Subject-specific Skills:

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the close-reading and analysis of play texts.
• an ability to discuss dramatic texts in their intellectual, historical and cultural contexts.
• an acute awareness of formal and aesthetic features of dramatic literature.
• an ability to articulate knowledge and informed understanding of concepts and theories relating to contemporary writing.
• an ability to articulate and substantiate an imaginative response to literature.
• ability to conduct research via word-processing and electronic data access while maintaining academic integrity (using web sources, interviews, reviews, social media as critical sources).
• command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology.
• understanding of importance of theoretical approaches to literature.
• awareness of literature as a medium through which values are affirmed and debated.

Key Skills:

• Students studying this module will develop:
• Confidence in working across media such as electronic recordings and print text.
• ability to synthesise supporting information from across disciplines (e.g. politics, history, gender theory, performance practice and history).
• capacity for independent thought and judgement in conversation with others.
• skills in critical reasoning and formulation of constructive criticism.
• confidence in argumentation in written form and competence in the planning and execution of essays.
• confidence in presenting independent research results in oral form and in group settings.
• information organisation and time-management skills.

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology.
• Consultation session: encourages students to reflect critically and independently on their work.
• Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar.
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the power of imagination in literary creation and the close reading and analysis of texts; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions. In individual Special Topics, the assessment may, where appropriate to the subject, take an alternative form, such as 'creative criticism'.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessment allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second assessment.

Before Assessment 1, students have an individual 15-minute consultation session in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a sheet of points relevant to the assessment and to receive oral comment on these points. Students may also if they wish, discuss their ideas for Assessment 2 at this meeting.

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