Specific Topics in Performance Studies

Code: ΕΠ 527

Semester: 5, 7

ECTS: 6

Course Instructor: Marios Komninos Nikiforos Chatziprokopiou

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This seminar is organized every year around a different research question and thematic based on performance theory and practice (see indicatively: ‘performance, gender, and sexuality’, ‘performance, space, and poetics). In the current academic year, the specific title of the course is ‘Performing Lament: Ritual, Art, and Politics‘. We examine poetic, vocal, and embodied expressions of lament. Through examples from diverse historical and cultural contexts—with a particular emphasis on the Mediterranean and Balkan regions—we investigate the multiple genealogies of lament rituals, as well as their visual and literary representations. Following classical anthropological analyses, lament is understood as both a form of debt and a practice of resistance. We examine its connection to women’s bodies and voices, in contrast to male-dominated political, legal, religious, and medical authorities (Alexiou, Loraux, Seremetakis). We also explore the transformation of religious rituals under contemporary conditions of forced displacement and migration, and their representations through mass media. At the same time, we focus on the political dimensions of religious performances. Drawing on the call for “mourning and militancy” (Crimp) and the concept of “agonistic mourning” (Athanasiou), we study activist and artistic performances that address hierarchies of mourning and the notion of ungrievable lives (Butler). In this context, we analyze various reinterpretations of Antigone as they appear in contemporary art and activism, engaging with a wide range of recent and current realities—from the ‘watery grave’ of the Mediterranean refugee crisis to the desaparecid@s of Latin America. Displacing lament from traditional kinship ties, we further explore mourning as performed by queer artists and communities. Finally, we combine theoretical research with artistic practice: students are invited to creatively engage with the theme of loss by developing original performances of lament, using their bodies, voices, and words as expressive tools.

SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Alexiou, Margaret (1974), The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

   

• Holst-Warhaft, Gail (1992), Dangerous Voices: Women’s Laments and Greek Literature, London and New York: Routledge.

   

• Makrinioti, Dimitra (2008), On Death. The political Administration of Mortality. Athens: Nisos (in Greek).

   

• Butler, Judith (2004), Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, London and New York: Verso.

   

• Seremetakis, Nadia C. (1991), The Last Word: Women, Death and Divination in Inner Mani, Chicago: University of Chicago Press