Theatre 365-1: American Theatre and Drama Eugene O’Neill and His Contemporaries Monday/Wednesday 9:30-10:50am, Parkes Hall 215 Instructor: Shannon K. Fitzsimons (
[email protected]) Office Hours: By appointment Course Description This course will examine American drama and theatre history from 1915 to 1945 through the stylistically diverse career of Eugene O'Neill, the only American dramatist to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Special emphasis will be placed on O'Neill's early career with the Provincetown Players, the expressionistic experiments of the 1920s, social dramas of the Depression years, and finally, the realist family dramas of the 1940s. Playwrights (besides O'Neill) to be studied include Susan Glaspell, Elmer Rice, Sophie Treadwell, Gertrude Stein, Marc Blitzstein, Clifford Odets, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller. Assignments Discussion Questions Beginning with class on Wednesday, January 4, and continuing through class on Wednesday, February 29, students are required to post TWO discussion questions on the assigned reading(s) for each class on Blackboard. Discussion questions are due by 8 am on the day of class. Students are expected to post discussion questions for 15 of the 17 discussion days; in other words, you may opt to not write questions for two classes of your choice. The discussion questions for each class are worth 1% of your final grade, for a total of 15%. They will be marked on a complete/incomplete basis, with complete questions receiving an A and incomplete questions receiving a zero. Contextual Presentation and Summary/Bibliography Each student will be responsible for presenting one ten-minute in-class presentation on a topic related to the course material; topics for each class meeting are listed on the weekly schedule below and a sign-up sheet for these presentations will be circulated on the first day of class.