मुख्य सामग्री को स्किप करे

World Theatre: Theory and Practice

World Theatre: Theory and Practice

- Dr.Soumyabrata Choudhary / Samik Bandopadhyay

This course will be exploratory in nature and its aim will be to problematize the terrain of "World Theatre". A different outline and orientation, with a different set of topics and readings, would surely yield "another world theatre." There will be two sections to this course: historical and contemporary. The historical section will mainly take the western theatrical tradition as its object. The tactical reason for this is that the received idea of "theatre" as a cultural construct comes from the West, and the theatrical practices of non-western origins have been largely dominated and judged by the cultural, conceptual and aesthetic models of western theatre. The contemporary side of our course will try to carry an anthropological description over into an ongoing debate as to the extension, comprehension and the very validity of the concept of "theatre" vis-à-vis (a) multi-cultural practices of performance, including their techniques, semiotic encodings and their aesthetics, (b) the overall condition of knowledge and practice in society currently called 'postmodern' and its relations with the specific or universal features of a global capitalist 'world'.

Pre readings :

• Michael Huxley and Noel Witts eds., The 20th Century Performance Reader, Routledge, London, 1996.

• Martin Banham, ed., The Cambridge Guide to World Theatre, New York, 1988.

• Eric Bentley, The Theory of the Modern Stage, Baltimore, 1968.

A warm welcome to the modified and updated website of the Centre for East Asian Studies. The East Asian region has been at the forefront of several path-breaking changes since 1970s beginning with the redefining the development architecture with its State-led development model besides emerging as a major region in the global politics and a key hub of the sophisticated technologies. The Centre is one of the thirteen Centres of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that provides a holistic understanding of the region.

Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

Several students of the centre have been recipients of prestigious research fellowships awarded by Japan Foundation, Mombusho (Ministry of Education, Government of Japan), Saburo Okita Memorial Fellowship, Nippon Foundation, Korea Foundation, Nehru Memorial Fellowship, and Fellowship from the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments. Besides, students from Japan receive fellowship from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.