Transformative Ideas: Power, Theater, and Politics

What is power? How is it created, transferred, or lost within a polity? What happens when one entity seizes power from another? Must violence always be at the center of that event, or can shared culture animate the accumulation and maintenance of power in a society? This Transformative Ideas seminar examines how insights in political theory and theater studies have addressed these questions. Concepts include ambition; sovereignty; violence and coercion; collectivism, especially nationalism; and rhetoric. Key writers include Aristotle; Plato; Machiavelli; Sophocles; Shakespeare; Weber; Arendt; Douglass; Soyinka; Alfred Jarry; Caryl Churchill; June Jordan, and Lynn Nottage.