Syllabus Winter 2008

Here's the syllabus for the next quarter's offering; some minor adjustments here and there, plus a couple of new topics. I'm most interested in seeing what happens with the events in the fall at the University of Southern Utah, where acting students refused to read scenes written by playwriting students because of language--the playwriting students and their professor have agreed to be interviewed by the Ohio State students--
also adding a topic (not on syllabus) about the efforts in Rome, Georgia, to try a comic book store owner for having made available a graphic novel that contains a drawing of a nude Pablo Picasso. The case has gotten national coverage, and both the comic book store owner and the author/artist have agreed to participate.

Theatre 597: Issues of the Contemporary World: Censorship as an Instrument of Public/Private Policy
5 cr hrs. U/G. Winter 2008 TR 1:30-3:18 p.m. 0384 Arps
Instruc Instructor: Dr. Alan Woods
1433 Lincoln Tower
292-6614 woods.1@osu.edu
Office hours: MW 12:00 noon -1:00:p.m., T 3:30 p.m.– 4:30 p.m. and by appointment
Grader: Matthew Yde yde.1@osu.edu

Prerequisite: Senior Standing. GEC contemporary world course. Not available for graduate credit for graduate students in the Department of Theatre.

Course Description:
Exploration of the ways in which censorship has been employed by governmental groups in both western and Asian societies as an instrument of public policy, or in response to pressure groups within those societies.

Course Objectives:
1. To discover how different contemporary societies perceive the role of government in controlling what information citizens can freely access 2. To study the interaction between cultures with differing (and often mutually exclusive) societal value systems 3. To explore the ways in which the cultures of contemporary societies have become interdependent, and some of the stresses that interdependence creates 4. To give students the opportunity to gain a richer comprehension of issues of censorship and governmental control in the contemporary world.

Background Statement:
As culture becomes global, one response has been an increasing conservatism and nationalism, often expressed in efforts by governmental bodies to control or shape information. Those efforts frequently result in censorship (whether overt or covert), often defended on moral, cultural, political, or educational grounds. Worries about secular Western influences in fundamentalist Islamic countries which led to the banning of cable television in Iran, the concern about the imposition of American sexual freedom on Chinese youth which caused the Chinese government to ban a production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, a Wisconsin superindentent cancelling the musical Urinetown to protect student morals, or efforts to block pornographic websites (defined in radically diverse ways) in American libraries, schools and homes--all are recent manifestations of beliefs that governments must regulate expression. However justified, such efforts often are met with fierce resistance and at least some measure of public debate. The course will explore selected examples of censorship, or attempts to establish censorship, in a variety of western and eastern cultures, to examine the issues that such efforts expose.

Course Requirements:
Each student will write a personal manifesto regarding his or her own response to the larger issue of the role of government in regulating information; the initial manifesto is due January 8th, and a final version will be submitted March 10th, replacing the scheduled final examination.
Student participants will be organized into small research teams of 4-5 members each, and will explore specific instances of attempted censorship. The explorations will result in classroom presentations, a written report, and an annotated bibliography. Written reports may, at the students’ option, be submitted in the form of a webpage or in any other format which best serves the material; approval of the selected format is required by February 26th.
Individual students will also write a peer evaluation of their colleagues on the research team, covering such elements as timeliness of contributions, ability to accomplish assignments, the usefulness of contributions, value of contribution to the overall project, willingness to participate in group project. Each student will also evaluate six presentations by other research teams.
Research teams will explore the any of following cases of censorship or attempted censorship; other cases may be chosen with permission of the instructor:
SEX ON STAGE AND IN PRINT:
Whole World of Lesbian Sex in Arkansas; The Vagina Monologues, North America, China, India, Europe, 1997-2007; Romeo and Juliet in Missouri, 2006 ; Picasso Goes to Georgia; Idomeneo at Deutsche Oper, Berlin, 2006
RELIGION ON STAGE AND IN ART:
Our Lady of the Tortillas in Texas 2007 Christopher Durang, the Roman Catholic Church, and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All To You, St. Louis and elsewhere, 1980s. Corpus Christi: Terrence McNally and a gay parable, New York and elsewhere, 1998-2005. Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s Behzti (Dishonour), at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, 2004
Jerry Springer, The Opera, on stage and television, 2003-2007
Chocolate Jesus in New York
POLITICS
"Kucch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai" (Anything Can Happen) banned in Pakistan (2004) Maulana Azad and the Gujarat Censor Board, India, 2003. Porgy and Bess and cultural diplomacy, Europe and the Soviet Union, 1952-56.
“Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” Andrew Meyer at the University of Florida, 2007
SEX AND POLITICS
Annie Sprinkle, Karen Finley, and Tim Miller: the NEA 4 updated, United States, 1990-2007. Burlesque, strip tease, and exotic dance, from the C. H. McCaghy Collection, Lawrence & Lee Theatre Research Institute
EDUCATIONAL CENSORSHIP
Grease in Missouri, 2005; Urinetown in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, 2006, Beloved in Kentucky, 2007, The Crucible in Illinois and California, 2006, Voices in Conflict in Connecticut, 2007.
University of Southern Utah acting students 2007

Bibliography:
Alpert, Hollis. The Life and Times of Porgy and Bess: the Story of An American Classic. New York: Knopf, 1990. Angelou, Maya. Singin’ and Swingin’ and Getting’ Merry Like Christmas. New York: Random House, 1976. Barish, Jonas. The Anti-Theatrical Prejudice. Berkeley: U of California P, 1981.
Bolton, Richard, ed. Culture Wars: Documents from the Recent Controversies in the Arts. New York: New Press, 1992. Hamilton, Marybeth. When I’m Bad, I’m Better: Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Heins, Marjorie. Not In Front of the Children : "Indecency," Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth. New York : Hill and Wang, 2001.
Hunter, James Davison. Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. New York: Basic Books, 1991.
Levine, Judith. “Kids. Theater,” The Nation 284:2 (January 8/15, 2007), 32-6.
Levinson, Nan. Outspoken: Free Speech Stories. Berkeley: U of California P, 2003.
Sova, Dawn B. Banned Plays: Censorship Histories of 125 Stage Dramas. New York: Facts on File, 2004. West, Mae. Three Plays by Mae West, ed. Lillian Schlissel. New York : Routledge, 1997.

Additional Course Guidelines:
1. All written work must be submitted in processed form or via e-mail. Handwritten work will not be accepted. 2. Course material will be available online, via the course webpage. Instructions on how access the course webpage will be distributed in advance of the course via e-mail, and during the first class session.

Texts:
General texts will be available online, on the course webpage; hard copies will be available on reserve through the Ohio State University Libraries. Additional copies will be available in the reading room of the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, 14th floor of Lincoln Tower. Research projects will require the use of primary source materials which may have limited availability, due to their nature. The types of research materials each topic entails, and their availability, will be made clear at the beginning of the term.

Grading Scale:
Your grade will be based on a combination of the following: research project written report: 60 points research project annotated bibliography: 20 points peer evaluations: 10 points personal manifesto: preliminary draft 10 points personal manifesto: final version 20 points Evaluations of research teams: 6 @ 4 points 24 points
TOTAL POSSIBLE POINTS: 200
Grading Points:
A 185 and above A- 180-184 B+ 174-179
B 166-173 B- 160-165 C+ 154-159 C 146-153 C- 140-145 D+ 130-139 D 120-129 E 119 and below
Any student who feels s/he may need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact me privately to discuss specific needs. Please contact the Office of Disability Services at 292-3307, room 150 Pomerene Hall, www.ods.ohio-state.edu/welcome.htm (a text only version is at www.ods.ohio-state.edu/textonly/index.htm) to coordinate reasonable accommodations for students with documented disabilities.
This syllabus is available in alternative formats upon request.
USG ESCORT SERVICE: 292-3322.

Class Schedule:
R 1/3: backgrounds: definitions of types of censorship, discussion of reasons for efforts to censor; governmental and public policy issues.
T 1/8: governmental and public policy issues; formation of research teams; have read Hunter, introduction; Bolton, Chapter 1; preliminary personal manifesto due.
R 1/10: history of censorship in the west, Classic through early Medieval periods; assignment of research project topics; Barish, chapters 1-3.
T 1/15: history of censorship in the west, Medieval through Renaissance periods; Barish, chapter 4.
R 1/17: history of censorship in the west, post Renaissance.
T 1/22: censorship in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; have read Hunter, Introduction.
R 1/24: history of censorship in the east; nationalism, cultural/class identity.
T 1/29: case study: Mae West. Have read West: Sex, The Drag.
R 1/31: case studies: the Lord Chamberlain in England, 1747-1968; Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union; have read Lantern articles.
T 2/5: case study: the Motion Picture Code in the United States, 1934-1955.
R 2/7: student reports: groups 1-2
T 2/12: student reports: group 3-4 R 2/14: student reports: groups 5-6
T 2/19: student reports: group 7-8 R 2/21: student reports: group 9-10
T 2/26 student reports: group 11-12; final report format approval by this date.
R 2/28 student reports: group 13-14
T 3/4: student reports: group 15
R 3/6 censorship: revisited; summary and conclusions; final reports submitted or mounted on webpage

M 3/10 1:30 p.m. Final exam scheduled; personal manifesto final version due