Malinche y el Abuelo. Photograph: Miguel Gandert, 1995. 

Taught by 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
diana.taylor@nyu.edu
Graduate Assistant, 
Alyshia Gálvez
ag465@nyu.edu

Staging the Nation: 19th Century U.S./Mexican Performance of Citizenship

Course #H42.2382
Fall 2001

Meeting time: 
Wednesdays, 
12:30-3:15 pm 

Location: 
721 Broadway, 
Room 636 

Course Description

This course examines the roles of performance in the shifting notions of ethnic, racial, and national identity as the US/Mexico border moves in 1848. What, now, does it mean to be 'native'? Who is 'American'? Who is 'Mexican'? How do Mexicans become Mexican-Americans? We explore how popular performances such as corridos, partorelas, carpa, and revista theatre participate in the transmission of social memory and ethnic identity in Mexico, while in the U.S., they constitute the origins of a Chicano/a performance canon. We look at how performances also re-invent the past (i.e., 19th century plays on pre-conquest themes, the legends of the Alamo) in order to fortify a sense of national identity. What happens to indigenous communities (the Yaqui, the Huichol, and the Tarahumara) that resist nationalist struggles and ignore geo-political borders? In closing, the course will assess how these 19th century struggles continue to shape key debates about race, language, aesthetics, and citizenship both in the U.S. and Mexico.

This is the third course to be developed and taught in conjunction with the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, a Ford and Rockefeller foundations-funded research and teaching consortia between NYU and several Latin American Universities. As such, the course, Staging the Nation, is being taught simultaneously at NYU, at the University of Rio de Janeiro, at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru in Lima, Ohio State University, and the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo Leon in Monterrey, Mexico. Each course follows a similarly structured syllabus, and shares key an essential reading list. (However, each will have a slightly different emphasis: OSU's will have a general focus on nation-building in Latin America, NYU on US/ Mexico, UANL on northern Mexico, UNI-RIO on Brazil, and the Universidad Católica on Peru.) The five 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, bi-weekly live-chat sessions and collaborative web-based final projects.