Great Performances

Comparative Literature 141

_____________________ Welcome to our course

Comparative Literature 141 is a First Year Writing Course that introduces students to performances around campus at the University of Michigan. This year the course will specifically focus on performance and social change.

Instead of attending live performances during Covid-19, students will explore a wide range of performing arts presented online, including music, theater, dance, film, and musical theater.

Scroll down to view course-related highlights, ranging from examples of student writing, new workshop styles, and performances we are watching.

Meet The Teaching Team

Our course has 160 students and a team of 10 instructors (from left to right, top to bottom): Mari Stanev, Yopie Prins, Graham Liddell, Karl Gaudyn, Ana Popovic, Raya Naamneh, Lauren Benjamin, David Martin, Imani Cooper Mkandawire, Lis Fertig. 

Arts & Social Change

    Coordinating with University of Michigan's October  DEI Virtual Summit  on Arts+Social Change, students will do final research projects on performance and social change.

Questions about Performance

We are asking questions about “liveness” in performance, how to listen, how to watch, from different places and spaces for performance, bodies in performance, the role of the audience, and performance in new media.

Writing about performance

In addition to a deep consideration of the Performing Arts, this class offers exciting and nuanced approaches to writing. Throughout the semester students will write about different examples of performance, and also explore options for multi-modal writing [e.g. instagram essay, mini-podcast, webpage]

Multimodal Writing & AI

The Instagram Essay assignment is an optional writing response. It is a low-stakes venture, introducing students to the intersections of multimodal writing, social media algorithms, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), through social justice related themes.

See the example Instagram Essay titled "When we open our mouths to speak" https://www.instagram.com/complit_141/ 

Mini Podcasts

This optional writing response gives students the opportunity to explore the vast world of podcasts, and the necessary composition skills behind this expressive form.

Performance Highlights

Scroll down to view highlights of performances we are discussing throughout the semester

Eugene Rogers

Watch Eugene Rogers, U of M Director of Choirs conduct "Seven Last words of the unarmed" by Joel Thompson, performed by U of M Men's Glee Club

Dr. Eugene Rogers is Director of Choral Activities and Associate Professor of Conducting in the School of Music, Theater, and Dance at the University of Michigan. In the 2020 Teach-Out on Police Brutality in America, he contributed a lesson to the section on Policing, Media, and Culture. 

In this lesson, he explains that "music and singing have always played a critical role in inspiring, mobilizing, and giving voice to protest" and he describes how "the evolution of music in the Black freedom struggle reflects a wide range of songs from the slaves in the 1600's to the Black Lives Matter movement songs of today." 

A website dedicated to the "Seven Last Words of the Unarmed" can be found @  https://sevenlastwords.org 

Claudia Rankine

"The White Card"

From the back cover:

"Claudia Rankine's first published play, The White Card, poses the essential question: Can American society progress if whiteness remains invisible? Composed of two scenes, the play opens with a dinner party thrown by Virginia and Charles, an influential Manhattan couple, for an up-and-coming artist Charlotte. Their conversation about art and representations of race spirals toward the devastation of Virginia and Charles's intentions. One year later, the second scene brings Charlotte and Charles into the artist's studio, and their confrontation raises both the stakes and the questions of what--and who--is actually on display. The White Card is a moving and revelatory distillation of racial divisions as experienced in the white spaces of the living room, the art gallery, the theater, and the imagination itself."

Camille A. Brown

"Ink"

Blending the aesthetics of modern dance, hip-hop, African, African American social dance, ballet, and tap, Camille Brown's choreography embodies a strong sense of storytelling. Her work in character-based narrative dance speaks to our historical moment and the urgent need for social change.  

"Ink" celebrates the rituals, gestural vocabulary and traditions that remain ingrained within the lineage of the African Diaspora, from generation to generation. The work examines the culture of Black life that is often appropriated, rewritten, or silenced. From the Abolitionist movement to the Civil Rights struggle, from the Black Power movement to the emergence of hip-hop, ink explores the link between the heart of the hip-hop cultural phenomenon and our current generation’s political response to socioeconomic injustice.

ADZKN

This module coincides with Indigenous Peoples' Day on October 12. ADZKN is an arts organization and multimedia production company based in Detroit, specializing in music, film, design and storytelling. As described on the ADZKN website, their name comes from the Anishinaabe word "Aadizookaan" (ah-dihz-ooh-kahn] that means "the sacred spirit of the story" conveyed in "story/message/messenger." 

In the video, you will see a performer known as "White Feather Woman" at several crosswalks on Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor. 

The photographer taking pictures of her is Sacramento Knoxx, an Ojibwe and Chicano rapper who is artist-in-residence this year with the UM University Musical Society.  

MUSKET production of Newsies

In fall 2020 MUSKET is proud to present "Newsies," the broadway musical based on the historical Newsboy Strike of 1899. Filmed in concert during COVID, this all-student production reflects on systems that support inequity and help to remind us that through the power of action, justice prevails.

Abbas Kiarostami

"Close-up"

The great Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami lived through the 1979 revolution, and revolutionized modern cinema with "docufiction" films that combine fictional and documentary elements. 

Lisa Bielawa

"Voter's Broadcast"

"Voter’s Broadcast" is a 15-minute choral composition designed to stimulate voter engagement and political awareness through the act of making music. The virtual world premiere will be broadcast on October 28, co-presented by the University Musical Society and commissioned as part of LSA’s Democracy and Debate theme semester. 

 

A Yopie Prins &

Imani Cooper Mkandawire [ICM] Collaborative Design