New Unit of existing course: H42.2407.001 ("Topics in Latin American Performance")

"The Colonial Americas" analyzes the politics of performance during the colonial period of the Americas (from 16^th-19^th centuries) with a focus on Mexico. How does the social spectacle change, from the time of the massive theatricalization of communal life before the Conquest to the domination of the vanquished populations by new spectacles of social power: the Inquisition, imposed bodily techniques on subjugated populations (slavery, language, dress, worship, living conditions, work) and the re-organization of public space.

The course begins with an overview of the establishment of Spanish colonial authority following the Conquest—the edicts, prohibitions, evangelical theatre, religious processions, celebrations of State authority, and the Inquisition on one hand, as well as the attempts made by various populations to find a space within that zone of prohibition in which they could survive. We look at the continuities of indigenous practices that adapt to the Christian calendar, at the cryptic practices of the Jews or conversos evading Inquisitorial control, and at the performances of criollos such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz who wrote within and against Church and State power. We analyze the profound changes wrought on these performance cultures in their encounter and evasion with the other, and examine how performance was strategically altered and used by various social groups in order to achieve their ends. Through a careful review of primary readings, critical texts, and performance traditions we will try to gain an appreciation of the complex function of performance in the political drama of "New World" colonization. Throughout, we remain attentive to the fact that the meanings of "New World" performance are relative and contextual, derived from the different cultural, social, and ideological frames of reference, which are, brought to bear on the material.

This is the second course to be developed and taught in conjunction with the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, a Ford-funded research and teaching consortia between NYU and several Latin American Universities. As such, the course is being taught simultaneously at NYU, at the University of Rio de Janeiro, at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru in Lima, and the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo Leon (Monterrey). Each course follows a similarly structured syllabus, and shares key an essential reading list. (However, each will have a slightly different emphasis: NYU's will focus more on central Mexico, UANL on northern Mexico, UNI-RIO on Brazil, and the Universidad Católica on Peru.) The four courses will be coordinated through a shared website, which will house course readings, translation software, and other material related to the course. In addition students from all four countries are expected to participate in an ongoing discussion list, and bi-weekly live-chat sessions with the instructors. For each unit of the course, we will organize at least one interactive web-based event: for example, a live video-cast of a guest speaker with discussion to follow.

Preliminary Syllabus for the NYU (the numbers do not correspond to weeks or class meetings]

Performance Studies Readings:
Victor Turner: Social Drama
Richard Schechner, Performance Theory
Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead
Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember
Time out of Time: Essays on the Festival, ed Alessandro Falassi

Background Reading:
James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest, Stanford UP. 1992
Charles Gibson. The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule, Stanford, 1964
Ed, Cevallos-Candau, et al, Coded Encounters: Writing, Gender, and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America, U Mass Press, 1994
Schroeder, Wood, Haskett (ed), Indian Women of Early Mexico
[Read Burkholder & Johnson: Colonial Latin America]

Unit One: Theories of Performance and Embodied Practice

In this section, we look at theories of performance that help us understand the transmission of social identity and memory through expressive cultures. Through a brief examination of the pre-conquest ritual, New Fire, we explore the cosmological, political, and social dimensions of performance to better understand the changes on the embodied cultures wrought by the Conquest.

1. Introduction:
2. Theories of embodied memory and the transmission of collective identity:
   Read selections of: Richard Schechner ("Restoration of Behavior" in Between Theatre and Anthropology) and Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Intro and Ch 1 "Social Memory") and Burkholder & Johnson, Colonial Latin America, Ch 1 & 2. Ritual: "Nuevo Fuego"
3. Performance Events and Vortices of Performance Read: Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance, Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead (Ch 1 ), Falassi, "Festival: Definitions and Morphology", Bartolomé de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, pg. 9-17.

Unit Two: Theatricalization of Power

Arguing that Native peoples could only understand what they saw with their eyes, the Spanish missionaries and colonizers actively involved the vanquished populations in new spectacles of social power. In this section we how the conquerors tried to control (and even 'disappear') most forms of Native performance and impose performances of their own. Here we examine the military and religious theatre of the 16^th century in relation to spectacles of non-compliance--most particularly the auto de fe of theInquisition.

4. Military theatre and evangelical theatre: The Final Judgement (El juicio final) and The Destruction of Jerusalem (La destrucción de Jerusalem)
   Read: Max Harris, "The Dramatic Testimony of Antonio de Ciudad Real: Indigenous Theatre in 16^th century New Spain.", Trexler, ‘We Think, They Act." Read chs. 3 & 4 of Colonial Latin America
   
5. Corpus Christi: Motolinía, ch. XV.
   
6. Inquisition: The Auto de Fe as the Performance of Church Authority and the Spectacle of the Body
   Read: "The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World" [Perry & Cruz, Cultural Encounters], ch 1 & 2, selections of R. Greenleaf: The Mexican Inquisition of the 16^th century and Ch. 5 & 6 of Colonial Latin America.
7. Idols and Effigies: Giving Shape to the Evidence: Roach, Cities of the Dead, Ch 2
   
8. Legislating the disappearance of performance: Edicts and regulations imposed on native performance Landa, and "Control Gubernamental y censura eclesiástica" (from M. Ramos Smith, Censura y Teatro Novohispano (1539- 1822)
9. New racial formations: Slavery and the Caste System: Bartolomé de las Casas and M.C. García Sáiz, Las Castas Mexicanas

Unit Three: Embodied Performance as an Alternate History: Religion, Dance, and Theatre

For all the attempts to extinguish native forms of worship and performance, these forms continued to exist through multiple syncretic and transcultured forms. Given the difficulties of transmitting alternate histories through written (due to illiteracy, censorship, lack of access to the press, etc), many communities passed on their sense of collective identity through performance. In this section, we explore some of the transcultured transformations of native practices and beliefs into new, syncretic cultural forms.

10. Embodied Religion: Mestizaje and Syncretism. La Virgen de Guadalupe. (ed. Sousa, Poole & Lockhart), Art & Ritual (Susan Verdi Weber, selections). Noguez, Documentos guadalupanos)
11. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, The Divine Narcissus/El divino narciso; 17^th & 18^th Edicts and Prohibitions

Unit Four: Restaging Colonial Practices in Contemporary Performances

Many of the transcultured forms that came into existence in the 16^th century exist today-- either as popular practices that have evolved over the past four hundred years (i.e. pastorelas) or as self-conscious postcolonial strategies by avant-garde artists.

12. Pastorelas: Los Pastores, Richard Flores
13. Performance Artists: Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Jesusa Rodriguez and Astrid Hadad
14. Final discussion

On order in NYU Bookstore:
Burkholder & Johnson: Colonial Latin America
Sousa, Poole & Lockhart, The Story Of Guadalupe
Perry & Cruz, Cultural Encounters
Flores, Richard, Los Pastores: History and Performance in the Mexican Shepherd’s Play of the South Texas