HUM S35 - Antisemitism In Performance

Course Description

Theatre and performance have spread anti-Semitic imagery and narratives and also challenged those same racist and hateful narratives. David Y. Chack, long-time Oakton Emeritus instructor and DePaul professor, will sensitively yet cogently show how narratives of antisemitism found a home, historically and systemically, in theatre/performance. Then, the class will analyze plays and performances that challenge and defy these narratives, through the search for justice and healing. Works to be included are the musicals “Parade,” by Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown, and “The Producers,” by Mel Brooks; and dramas such as “BlacKkKlansman,” by Spike Lee, “Leopoldstadt,” by Tom Stoppard, and “Denial,” screenplay by David Hare in which Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust scholar, was sued by Holocaust denier David Irving for libel.