Skip to main content

Independently Studied

Hey y'all -

So, here's a quick list of works I thought folx could be interested in covering for next semester.

Though the actual "syllabus", whatever that means, is still to be determined, I really like the idea of creating works that culminate in a final show off-campus, which we could all help book/promote.

Anyway, here are my top few works, that I know I could spend a lifetime talking / thinking about.


Literature
A Brief History of Seven Killings (Marlon James, 2014)
Citizen (Claudia Rankine, 2014)
Another Country (James Baldwin, 1962)
Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2015)
We Were 8 Years in Power (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2017)
Blood Meridian (Cormac Mccarthy, 1985)


Operas
Dust (Robert Ashley, 1998)
Margaret Garner (Toni Morrison, 2005)
Your Money My Life Goodbye (Robert Ashley, 1998)


Dust is about neurotypicality / marginalization, so it seems most relevant, but alternatively we could venture into the Now Eleanor's Idea tetralogy, which encompasses 4 separate and distinct but interconnected operas, including:

Improvement (Don Leaves Linda) (1985)
eL/Aficionado (1987)
Now Eleanor's Idea (1993)
Foreign Experiences (1994)


Films
Whose Streets? (Sabaah Folayan, Damon Davis, 2017)
When the Levees Broke (Spike Lee, 2006)
Ethnic Notions (Marlon Riggs, 1986)
After the Night (Basil de Cunha, 2013)
Pariah (Dee Rees, 2011)
Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler, 2013)
Shadows (John Cassavettes, 1959)
Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)
Tout va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard, 1972)
I, A Negro (Jean Rouch, 1958)
Cannibal Tours (Dennis O'Rourke, 1988)
Them and Me (Stephanie Breton, 2001)




Comments

  1. This is a great living-life-list, Zach! And YES to Dust (I was the dramaturg for a restaging of Dust by chorégraphes Megan Bridge in Philadelphia a few years ago)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Edouard Glissant - Poetics of Relation (some concepts)

Errantry (errance) 18- errantry does not proceed from renunciation nor from frustration regarding a supposedly deteriorated (deterritorialized) situation of origin; it is not a resolute act of rejection or an uncontrolled impulse of abandonment. - The thought of errantry is a poetics, which always infers that at some moment it is told. The tale of errantry is the tale of Relation. 21- The thinking of errancy conceives of totality but willingly renounces any claims to sum it up or possess it. 20- The thought of errantry is not apolitical nor is it inconsistent with the will to identity, which is, after all, nothing other than the search for a freedom within particular surroundings. Rhizomatic thought / rhizome 18- the rhizome- prompting the knowledge that identity is no longer completely within the root but also in Relation. Poetics of Relation 11- each and every identity is extended through a relationship with the Other 20- in the poetics of Relation, one who is erra...

Denise Ferreira da Silva 1 (life) ÷ 0 (blackness) = ∞ − ∞ or ∞ / ∞: On Matter Beyond the Equation of Value

Here are some notes on Denise's text for those interested. Central question: What if blackness referred to rare and obsolete definitions of  matter : respectively, “substance … of which something consists” and “substance without form”? How would this affect the question of value? What would become of the economic value of  things  if they were read as expressions of our modern grammar and its defining logic of obliteration? Would this expose how the  object  (of exchange, appreciation, and knowledge)—that is, the economic, the artistic, and the scientific thing—cannot be imagined without presupposing an ethical (self-determining) thing, which is its very condition of existence and the determination of value in general. On Blackness as disruptive force: activate blackness’s disruptive force, that is, its capacity to tear the veil of transparency (even if briefly) and disclose what lies at the limits of justice. when deployed as method, blackness fractur...

Fred Moten: "Blackness and Nonperformance"