WEARING THE MASK: Performativity in African American Drama from 1950 to 1970

• Thesis title in Czech: Nosíme masku: Performativita v Afroamerickém divadle od roku 1950 do roku 1970
• Thesis title in English: WEARING THE MASK: Performativity in African American Drama from 1950 to 1970
• Key words: Afroamerický|afroameričané|divadlo|drama|performativita|rasa|rasismus|divadelní teorie|studium rasy|divadelní performance|Hnutí za občanská práva|Butler|Hansberry|Baraka|rasa v kontextu USA
• English key words: African-American|African Americans|theatre|drama|performativity|race|racism|theatre theory|studies of race|theatre performance|Civil Rights Movement|Butler|Hansberry|Baraka|race in the United States
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2017/2018
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: doc. Clare Wallace, M.A., Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 06.06.2018
• Date of assignment: 06.06.2018
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 11.06.2018
• Date and time of defence: 10.09.2019 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 08.08.2019
• Date of proceeded defence: 10.09.2019
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: PhDr. Hana Ulmanová, Ph.D.

Guidelines

This MA thesis is going to investigate the development and uses of performativity – primarily that of race – in African-American drama after 1950. As per methodology, the thesis would take a chronological approach to the investigation of the topic, starting at the break of the 1940s and 50s and proceeding through to the end of the 1960s, while examining both major and minor works of African-American playwrights such as Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka or Ted Shine and other writers working at the time. The plays themselves will be read in relation to the specific historic and sociological context of the time, but with specific emphasis on the theories of identity performance and the politics of race.
Before the investigation itself, the thesis will open with two chapters establishing the theoretical background of the work. The first of these will serve the purpose of establishing performativity as a concept; introducing and explaining its most important notions and terminology, and its use not only in the field of race or gender, but also its use in theatre and how performativity is understood and applied there. The second chapter would use the concept to establish the discourse of African American theatre and create a cohesive picture of the racial images and the approaches to racial consciousness before 1950, both by the African Americans and white Americans; for example the images of the “negro brute” and minstrel, as well as the strategies employed in dismantling them. To a minor extent, this part, as well as the following part would build on my BA thesis, Between Art and Politics; using it primarily for reference to the politics of race as proposed by W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke.
Building upon the theoretical and contextual base, the work will examine how the theories of performativity shaped African American plays from 1950 to 1970. This timeframe is chosen since in the two decades performativity was the most striking in African American drama and played an essential part in shaping it. Furthermore, the two decades represent two distinctive uses of performativity. The theory of performativity established in the first part will be used in combination with the chronological approach in order to chart a comprehensive picture of performativity of race, and where it left off, at the end of the 1960s. As far as structure is concerned, the examination will be divided into two sub-chapters, with each focusing in one of the two decades
The goal of the work is not solely to see how the approach to the politics of race changed in since the early twentieth century, but to track the developmental shifts, attempt to reveal the reasoning behind them and apply the theory of performativity of race to theatre, which is not traditionally done, but which should be quite revealing precisely for that reason.

References

PRIMARY TEXTS(plays and anthologies)
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
Hatch James V, and Ted Shine. Black Theatre USA: Plays By African Americans, Vol I. The Early Period. New York : The Free Press, 1996.
----------------------------------- Black Theatre USA: Plays By African Americans, Vol II. The Recent Period. New York : The Free Press, 1996.
Jones, Leroi. The Dutchman and The Slave. New York: HarperCollins, 1971.

SECONDARY TEXTS(theoretical basis)
Austin, John L., How to Do Things with Words. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.
Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge, 1993.
____________Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Carter, Steven R. Hansberry´s Drama: Commitment Amid Complexity. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991,
Derrida, Jacques. Limited Inc. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1977.
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of the Black Folk. New York: Dover Publications, 1994.
Ethlers, Nadine. Racial Imperatives: Discipline, Performativity, and Struggles against Subjection. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012.
Gade, Rune, and Anne Jerslev. Performative Realism: Interdisciplinary Studies in Art and Media. Copenhagen: Museum Tuscalum Press, 2005.
Hartman, Sadyia V. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in the Nineteenth-century America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Hay, Samuel L. African-American Theatre: An Historical and Critical Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
McAllister, Martin Edward. Whiting Up: Whiteface Minstrels and Stage Europeans in African American Performance. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
Mianowski, Jacek. Memory, Identity, and Cognition. Basel: Springer, 2019.
Moten, Fred. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Parker, Andrew, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Performativity and Performance. London: Psychology Press, 1995.
Sanders, Leslie Catherine. The Development of Black Theater in America: From Shadows to Selves. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.