HUMS 331, Adapting to the Stage

Course Description

In this course, we explore theatre as a site of adaptation, as intermedial constellation. We investigate the relationship between dramatic literature and its performance and performability, between textual outlines and their realization(s): between scripts and stages. Focusing on ‘adaptations’ in their various forms, allows us to explore the history of modern German theatre (1750-present day) from a particular angle. The perspective encourages us to prioritize actors over the writers/directors, it requires us to focus on the margins of a script: paratexts—a stage direction, for example—rather than their ‘literary’ counterparts. With this shift of focus and radical widening of the perspective, the course aims to bring forth minor voices within the canons of German drama literature and to offer a way to engage creatively and in unexpected ways with the canons of our field.

Led by:

Professor Sophie Schweiger Sophie Johanna Schweiger will be joining Yale’s Department as Assistant Professor in July 2022. She finished her Ph.D. at Columbia University with a dissertation on the role of gestures in literature, film, and performance (2021). She worked one year as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Colgate University (2021-2022). Before that, she studied at the Universities of Vienna and Lisbon, and spent one year as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant at Rutgers University.