Dr. Eva Thury	Office hours: T 1-3; W: 2-3
Office Phone: 895-1711	and by appointment
Office: Macalister 5035	email: thury@drexel.edu

In one of the readings for this class, Elizabeth Burns notes that, "Unlike all other forms of literary art, a play is remade every time it is performed." In a sense, the kind of imaginative recreation that occurs when a play is produced also takes place any time a reader interacts with a literary work. As a result, the study of drama permits us to make explicit some of the operations which we as readers perform in interacting with a work of literature.

This course will focus on the plays of different eras, including: ancient Greece, Shakespearean England, 19th century Europe and 20th century America. Our intentions are not historical, however. Rather, we will be looking at the plays as literature, and considering the different conventions followed in them, as well as the ways in which playwrights portray the values and aspirations of their culture.

We will consider the plays we read from two primary perspectives of drama as

• a universal or public event which allows us to understand and transform our culture. This view is based on the work of anthropologists like Victor Turner who emphasize the relationship of drama and ritual.
• a means of literary expression through which a playwright embodies the many voices of his culture (Bakhtin's heteroglossia) in a unique and personal way.