• Attendance and participation 15%
• Canvas reading and viewing responses 10%
• Performance presentation on syllabus topic 20%
• Performance journal 25%
• Project proposal 10%
• Final project 20%

REQUIREMENTS:

Attendance and participation                                                                                    15%

• You will be asked to complete unscheduled in-class assignments that may include brainstorming exercises, creative writing, textual and video analysis, physical activities, and collaborative experiments. These are graded on effort. You are allowed to miss one class without penalty. Each unexcused absence after this will result in your attendance and participation grade being lowered by 5%.

Canvas reading and viewing responses                                                                      10%

• Excluding the first, fourth, and last weeks of the course, prior to each class, students will be asked to respond in two sentences to a Canvas prompt based on the weekly readings and performance materials. Students will have 24 hours to respond to each prompt: one mark per sentence over 10 weekly prompts. That’s a maximum of 20 total marks, which will be divided by 2 for a final grade out of 10.

Performance presentation on syllabus topic                                                             20%

• For this assignment, students will select a date on the syllabus during which they will make a 15–20-minute performative presentation that brings to life some aspect of that day's readings and viewings. These presentations should be brief, concise, and dynamic. You may direct us in a scene, sketch costumes, stage a puppet play, create a musical or movement score for a performance, share an audio or video work, etc. You are limited only by your imagination! In addition to the presentation, you will provide a one-page handout that outlines the theoretical, critical, artistic, and/or historical contexts for the work(s) under discussion, summarizes the main elements of the reading(s), and highlights links to other texts we have studied in the class. The goal of this exercise is not to exhaust a topic, but to bring to life a few key aspects of it. Conclude your presentation with two questions to spark class discussion.  You must email me your outline and questions at least 2 days prior to your presentation; failure to do so will result in your grade being lowered by one letter grade (e.g., an A on your presentation becomes a B). Dates and topics will be assigned at our first meeting and depending on final enrolment numbers there may be more than one presentation per week and/or collaborative group presentations.

Performance journal                                                                                                   25%

• For this assignment, you are asked to keep a journal in which you respond to the weekly prompts related to the syllabus readings and topics. Your journal may take the form of a physical notebook; a Word or Google doc; a blog, vlog, or website; a series of Instagram posts; a box of things; or a combination of the above. Your journal entries may appear in words/text AND/OR in any of the following (blurred) genres: still or moving images; drawings; collections of objects; sound recordings; performance scripts/scores. While you are encouraged to complete journal entries for each of the prompts, you are required to submit only four entries of your choice for assessment. These are due in class on week 12. There is also one compulsory journal entry that you are required to complete for week 4; you will share from this orally in class on that date, including any additional material related to it in your final journal submission. So, five graded journal entries x 5 marks each.

Project proposal                                                                                                         10%

• This one-page proposal for your final project should clearly identify: the research question you wish to investigate; any forms supplementary to a written paper you may wish to use in conducting this investigation (e.g., a photo essay, a visual diary, an installation, a sound or video work, a short performance, a series of movement or other scores); and the secondary theoretical, performance, and cultural criticism you will be drawing on to supplement your research (this can be included as a short bibliography). I encourage you to consult with me before your proposals are due (see below) regarding your chosen topic and research plan.

Final project                                                                                                                20%

• Your final project will ideally derive from either your performative syllabus presentation or one of your journal entries, or a combination of the two. It also allows you to draw on your own creative and critical practice. For example, you may want to conduct ethnographic interviews with family members or friends on a topic related to your larger research interests; in addition to incorporating material from these interviews into the written portion of your project, you may wish to use them to develop a short, scripted live or video performance that enacts aspects of your research. If you’re interested in digital performance and new media, you may want to explore more deeply the relationship between social media and the performative “presentation of self” through an Instagram story site. Or you may want to use techniques related to performance documentation, archiving, and/or reenactment to delve more deeply into the history and aesthetics of a precedent artwork that forms a part of your larger research. Students will have a chance to make a short presentation on their research to their peers during the final class. A final 1500-word written response (approximately 6 doubled-spaced pages in 12-point font) that synthesizes your research should be sent to me via email as a Word document by noon on April 11. It may be accompanied by any supplementary “performance materials” you wish me to look at.