818 South 2nd Street •
Minneapolis, MN 55415 •
Box Office: 612.377.2224
INSTRUCTOR
Roderick A. Ferguson - an associate professor of race and critical theory in the Department of American Studies who teaches courses on culture and social theory.
SCHEDULE AND CONTENT
Saturday, June 6, 9:30 - 11 a.m. - Roderick A. Ferguson
This seminar will use three of Tony Kushner's plays- Caroline or Change, Homebody/Kabul, and Angels in America-to explore the rise and decline of the U.S. as a superpower. The seminar will begin with Caroline or Change, using that play to discuss how the Civil Rights Movement won international esteem for U.S. society, an esteem that was crucial to the U.S.'s emergence as a superpower in the Cold War moment. The seminar then moves to Kushner's most famous work-Angels in America-to discuss the backlash in the nineteen eighties to civil rights gains, a backlash symbolized through the dismantling of social services and through the HIV/AIDS crisis, phenomenon that further weakened the U.S.'s symbolic standing in the international world. The seminar then finishes with Homebody/Kabul and considers how the international esteem established in the nineteen sixties disintegrated further with contemporary wars in the Middle East. click to purchase one ticket, call 612.377.2224 for two or more.