A course taught simultaneously at New York University (by Diana Taylor), the University of Rio de Janeiro (by Zeca Ligiéro), and at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru (by Luis Peirano Falconi), and coordinated through a shared web-site.

This course analyzes the politics of performance in the conquest of the Americas, with a focus on Mexico. From pre-Columbian times through the establishment of Spanish colonial authority, we witness a radical change in hegemonic order in which one imperial order comes to eclipse another. Performance was fundamental to both indigenous and European colonial epistemology, and was a primary means through which both cultures maintained or contested social authority. We analyze the profound changes wrought on these performance cultures in their encounter 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 and critical texts, we will try to gain an appreciation of the complex function of performance in the political drama of new world conquest and 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 first course to be taught under the auspices of the new Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. As such, the course is being taught simultaneously at NYU, at the University of Rio de Janeiro, and at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru in Lima. 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 Mexico, UNI-RIO on Brazil, and the Universidad Católica on Peru.) The three 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 three 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.

This course is intended as a research eng/seminar. Students are expected to develop independent research projects related to this material, and work with primary materials whenever possible. Collaborative research is encouraged-including collaborative work with students in Peru and Brazil. Final projects will be presented as multimedia web pages at the end of the semester.

INTRODUCTION: SPECTACLE IN ITS NEW WORLD CONTEXTS

Class 1 (9/9):
In this introductory unit, we approach the meaning and power of performance from the vantage of pre-Columbian American cultures. We resist the usual temptation to understand native performance from the vantage of the conquerors-from whom we have inherited most of our primary historical records, as well as many of the problematic, colonial frames of reference typically used to interpret native performance. Following an "eng/eng/overview" of the period (Leon-Portilla's The Broken Spears, Intro) we begin our re-orientation to the material, we focus on the various understandings of performance and representation recounted in Sahagún's Florentine Codex, Book 1. We use these multiple understandings as a site through which to examine our own (and Sahagún's) methodological and cultural assumptions about the nature and meaning of performance.

Readings:
Leon-Portilla, Miguel. The Broken Spears, vii-xxxi (eng/eng/overview). Role of representation and performance in transmitting the Mexica's history of migration and settlement.

Inga Clennendin, from Aztecs, "The Question of Sources"

Web Class 1 (9/14):
ACF lab in the Education Building, 35 W 4th St, 2nd floor, 1-3 PM
 

Class 2 (9/16):
Pre-Columbian notions of performance and representation

Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 1 (selections): Chs. 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 18, 20 and Sahagún's appendix. Multiple understandings of performance and representation described in many 'representations' of the gods that exceed Sahagún's understanding of them as idolatry.

Inga Clendinnen, from Aztecs: an interpretation, "Ritual: The World Transformed, the World Revealed"
 

UNIT 1: PRE-CONQUEST PERFORMANCE

In this unit, we analyze pre-Columbian performance as a complex mode of social behavior central to the production and maintenance of social, political, and cosmic order. Performance played a vital role in transmitting knowledge and social values and served as a conduit for storing and passing on communal history and memory.

Class 3 (9/23):
In this class we analyze the role of performance looking at specific myths, practices and ritual celebrations-, the birth of Huitzilopochtli, Xipe, "the flaying of men," sacrifice, "flower wars" among others. We will discuss the role of these spectacles in regard to impersonation, spectatorship, participation, 'audience,' and functionality. Native performance radically challenges the premises of most Western dramatic theory, including notions of mimesis, representation, the ephemeral, and repetition.

Birth of Huitzilopochtli, in Miguel León de Portilla, Pre-Colombian Literatures of Mexico
Fray Diego Durán, Selections from Book of the Gods and Rites: Ch III, "Regarding the manner in which men were sacrificed during the ceremonies"; Ch VI, "Which treats of the god known as Quetzalcoatl..."; and Ch IX, "Which treats of the great feast called Tlacaxipehualiztle, which means Skinning of Men..."
Sahagún. Book 2, V. Cecelia Klein, "Fighting with Femininity: Gender and War in Aztec Mexico."

Web Class 2 (9/28):
ACF lab in the Education Building, 35 W 4th St, 2nd floor, 1-3 PM
 

Class 4 (9/30):
Performance and Native Cosmography In this class we explore how performance served to maintain heavenly and earthly bodies in sync by looking at the time/space axis and the interconnectedness of the various 'worlds' in which life and death worked as a continuum. We look at the lay-out of the city as a way of securing cosmic harmony as well as staging political and religious dominance. These displays were accompanied by massive participation-fasting, sexual abstinance, self-sacrifice and other means of disciplining the body to the markings of religious space and time.

Códice Borbónico, selections

Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, poem "They have come to tell it"

Enrique Florescano, "The Nahua Concept of Space and Time," Memory, Myth, and Time in Mexico: From the Aztecs to Independence.

Clennendin, from Aztecs, "Tenochtitlán: The Public Image"
 
 

Class 5 (10/5): Here we look at the many forms of pre-Columbian "performance" such as oratory, dance, mime, 'theatre' and other forms of religious and popular entertainment.

Rabinal Achi

Background:
Festejos, ritos propiciatorios y rituales prehispánicos (Teatro Mexicano, historia y dramaturgia, vol. 1, 1992)

Webchat: (10/12)
Three Groups (NYU, UNI-RIO, PUCP) Pre-Columbian Performance Theory

10/12 First Assignment Due (5 page paper on pre-Columbian performance theory)

UNIT 2: THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF ENCOUNTER

In this unit, we analyze the colonial encounter itself as a foundational performative moment. We read Columbus's first letters and other accounts by European travelers as establishing the colonial paradigm of the construction of the "other," a paradigm that informs subsequent encounters between Europeans and Native Americans. We compare how performance was differently apprehended by the Spanish and Native American communities, reflecting distinct systems of signification and religious belief. We lend special attention to the moments in which both groups began to appreciate the unexpected effects of their performances on the other, and began to adjust their performance behaviors accordingly. For the Native Americans, we witness the radical dis-articulation of the Native American social universe, as the Spaniards impose new regimes of behavior and social organization.

Class 6 (10/14):
The Construction of the Other: Columbus

Columbus, Letters: first letter

Leon-Portilla, The Broken Spears

Ritual responses to social crisis: Moctezuma thinks that the Spaniards are Quetzalcoatl?

Rituals of appeasement, containment, omens. Gift-giving. Hermeneutics of crisis.

Durán, History of New Spain, selections.

Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean.

Class 7 (10/21):
The Construction of the other: Cortes

Cortes, Second Letter. Different performances, different concepts of warfare and diplomacy

Clendinnen, "Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty" (from Greenblatt's New World Encounters)

Bernal Díaz del Castillo, "The Entrance into Mexico" and "The Stay in Mexico" (from The Conquest of New Spain)
 
 

Class 8 (10/28):
Conquest

Sahagún, Book 12
 

Class 9 (11/4):
Race, Gender, Sexuality and Conquest

Malinche. Bernal Díaz del Castillo's "Doña Marina's Story"

Trexler, Sex and Conquest, selections

Class 9 webchat:
Discussion Three Groups (NYU, UNI-RIO, PUCP) Difference between Pre-Colombian and Spanish Performance Theory
 

Class 10 (11/11):
Regimes of the Body and Social Space

Baptism as performance

Diego de Landa, "Ordinance of Tomas Lopez"

Edicts against Performance, "Las Artes Escenicas en las Festividades Religosas (1539-1818)

UNIT 3: TEATRO DE CONQUISTA Y EVANGELIZACIÓN
How was theatre used in the military and spiritual conquest of New Spain? In this unit, we review the performance models brought from Spain in this period (actos, Corpus Christi performances, loas, etc.) and analyze the use and abuse of theatre as a tool of colonization. We examine the major Festivals of the late 1530s, and consider how theatrical performance provided a space for the imposition and contestation of the new social and religious cosmology. We read several major Native religious dramas as well, as complex documents of the transculturation or syncretism, which marked the period.

Class 11 (11/18):
Military Theatre

Conquest of Jersalem

Richard Trexler, "We Think, They Act: Clerical Readings of the Missionary Theatre in 16th Century New Spain" in Steven Kaplan, ed. Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (1984) 189-227.

Max Harris, "Disguised Reconciliations: Indigenous Voices in Early Franciscan Missionary Drama in Mexico."
 

Class 12 (12/2):
Evangelical Theatre: Corpus Christi

Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Obras Completas 7, Apologética Historia Sumaria II, Capitulo 64 ("En el cual se prosigue la fiesta del Corpus Cristi y lo que más había que notar en ella y en otras fiestas, de donde se demuestra la habilidad destas gentes para todas artes, etc.") p. 599-604

Toribio Motolinia, Historia de los Indios de Nueva España, Capitulo XV

Background:
Ozon Arroniz, Teatro de Evangelización

Teatro Mexicano, historia y dramaturgia, vol. 2: Teatro de evangelización en Náhuatl

UNIT FOUR: THEATRICALITY AND COLONIAL AUTHORITY
In this unit, we analyze the role of theatre and theatricality in the maintenance of Spanish colonial authority and power. We analyze the use of spectacle as a mechanism to both represent and implement colonial order in the public sphere, and as a means to exert control over colonial subjects. At the same time, patterns of syncretic performances signal that the pre-conquest traditions survive and are transmitted through the newly imposed colonial practices.

Class 13 (12/9):
Performance, Colonial Authority, Syncretism

Tonontzin/Virgin de Guadalupe

Beginnings of the Inquisition in New Spain:

Cultural Encounters: the Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, ed. Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz, selected readings, including: "Politics, Prophecy, and the Inquisition in late 16th Century Spain"
 
 

Class 14 (12/16): Discussion

Diana Taylor
Department of Performance Studies
Tisch School of the Arts
New York University
721 Broadway, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10003
Tel:1.212.998.1620
Fax: 1.212.995.4571
Email: hemisphere@nyu.edu