DALC PhD candidate, Valeriya Sabitova, is going to teach a new seminar titled “Corporealities in Post-2000s British and American Drama” (SIS code: AAAPHD004E) in the upcoming summer term (Thursday 15:50, Room P034). The course is open to DALC MA students as optional (volitelný předmět) and designed primarily for Erasmus students.

The multimodality of the body as a phenomenon and a theoretical construct has raised a variety of questions ranging from Cartesian dualism to Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of “being-with” (être-avec), which challenges the traditional dualism of mind and body. Nancy posits a state of “being-with-others,” where the body is not a discrete, autonomous entity, but rather a site of intersubjective engagement and shared experience. Theatre as a body-contingent art produces its own theories of the body that have evolved from emphasizing verisimilitude of complex stories and histories and participating in citational practices to questioning the presentation and representation of the body on stage.

In this light, the course explores the intricate relationship between the body and a range of critical discourses: mind, mental illness, ageing, trauma, gender, labour, politics, and race. The plays by Alice Birch, Annie Baker, Lucy Kirkwood, Duncan Macmillan, Lucy Prebble, Dan O’Brien seek to engage the students with examining how the body becomes a space of multiple and simultaneous inscriptions through several discourses. Each thematic session can be potentially addressed from various perspectives, hence contributing to understanding how theatre deals with the body inscribed by and functioning within the social, environmental, and political scripts.