Course Requirements and Activities

This is a one-credit, sprint course meeting during the first eight weeks of the semester. The course is designed to introduce theatre graduate students to standard scholarly resources and typical scholarly questions and concerns in the field of theater studies.
There will be weekly assignments to be completed by the following week and usually involve work in King Library.

Two longer paper assignments are due on 9/23 and 10/14.

Weekly schedule for August 26 to October 14, 2002 (TENTATIVE).

• Week 1. 8/26. Introduction to the course, to King Library, to library services, to MiamiLINK.
  Handouts about services, resources, and MiamiLINK.
  Assignment due 9/2: MiamiLINK and locations-of-materials exercise.

• Week 2. 9/2. Theater reference books.
  Handout: " Reference Books in Theater."
  Assignment due 9/9: Answer a set of questions using reference books.

• Week 3. 9/9. Literary and Drama Criticism 1.
  The use of the IBT, the MLA International Bibliography, and other indexes and bibliographies of criticism and scholarship. Emphasis is on the literary aspects of drama.
  Handout: "Literary Criticism: Indexes and Bibliographies."
  Paper assignment. Due 9/23: Compile a bibliography of books, articles, and other secondary publications (including web sites, if any) for 1991-2000 about a writer, work, or critical topic, using all appropriate bibliographies. Follow MLA Handbook format.

• Week 4. 9/16. Criticism continued; theater reviews and production aspects of drama.
  Handout: "Theatre Reviews."
  Assignment due 9/23: Find reviews of the first performance and significant revivals.

• Week 5. 9/23. Primary Texts 1.
  Paper #1 due.
  The use of bibliographies and records of primary materials and events--bibliographies of plays, lists of performances, documentary records, electronic texts.
  Handout: "English-Language Drama: Texts and Performances."
  Paper #2. Due Monday, October 14. The textual history of a play.

• Week 6. 9/30. Primary Texts, continued.
  Visit Special Collections to see examples of printed plays from First Folio to today and to explore manuscript archives, including the Usigli Papers, Native American Women Playwrights Archive, and Spiderwoman Theater.
  Assignment: Examine historical theater records.

• Week 7. 10/7. Historical Contexts: Theater and Social-Cultural Issues and Events, and People

• Week 8. 10/14. Language dictionaries; reference and research resources in related fields; course evaluation.
  Handouts: "English Language Dictionaries" and "Related Fields: A Selective List of Resources." Paper #2 due Monday, 10/14. Textual history of a play.