120691 PS Proseminar Cultural and Media Studies (2024W)

You may have encountered a spoken word poem on the internet, you may also be familiar with poetry slams, and you might have vaguely heard of the term “identity poem". A criticism often leveraged against spoken word poets’ performance of identity in their work is that it is employed as a strategy to win audience approval, sympathy, or points at a slam. But can this performance of identity be merely reduced to a performative gimmick, a winning tactic?

“Spoken word has often been hailed as a powerful platform for sharing one’s personal stories through verse. From these stages activists protest social inequality, marginalised and oppressed people assert the legitimacy of their identities, and those who have experienced trauma share their stories and are witnessed as survivors”, writes poet and scholar Katie Ailes. In this regard, how do poets highlight the politics of identity in their work? Do poets merely perform their own identity on stage? What role does the visibility of a marginalised identity on stage, in the spotlight, play in poetry performance? We will answer these questions, while briefly tracing the history of poetry performance in the UK in this course. We will explore poetry performances, poetry films, spoken word theatre shows, and other formats to investigate the various strands of identity at play in spoken word in the UK. Using theoretical lenses pertaining to race, gender, class, location, sexuality, disability, we will critically analyse poetry performances, and explore their cultural significance in the broader media studies context.

Close readings of the primary material will be supplemented by secondary literature on cultural studies and media analysis. In this course, students will have the chance to develop their analytical and academic writing skills, as well as gain basic theoretical tools for the critical analysis and interpretation of cultural texts.

By the end of the course, the students will
• Learn the historical context of spoken word in the UK
• Critically engage with and analyse poetry performance in different media
• Reflect upon the role and manifestation of identity in terms of race, gender, sexuality, class, disability, and other social identity markers in the performance of poetry, and apply relevant theoretical lenses
• Write both short and long analytical texts and develop their academic writing skills