170721 UE World Exhibitions (2024S)

Between 1851 and 1935, around 50 world's fairs, Weltausstellungen, éxpositions universelles etc. took place in Europe, the USA, Australia etc., cf. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Weltausstellungen.
The fact that technological innovation and industrialisation overlapped with commerce and consumerism on the one hand, and nationalism, imperialism and colonialism on the other, makes these exhibitions phenomena that have been the subject of much research. In them, historical developments of the 19th and early 20th centuries become particularly evident, and thus also a very ambivalent concept of modernity. The theatre metaphor is sometimes used in this research, and architecture and spatial arrangements are also described as staging devices. However, less attention has so far been paid to the integration of theatre performances in world exhibitions, even though all of the above-mentioned developmental trends may have overlapped in a particularly significant way.
The course therefore aims to explore the question of how theatre forms were integrated into world's fairs during the above-mentioned period and thus to investigate how these performances, oscillating between artistic aspiration, consumption and pleasure, became the experiential centre of the respective major events.
After an initial phase of joint reading and discussion of texts, which serves to develop basic knowledge about world exhibitions and their entertainment programmes, the students devote themselves to their own research project on theatre performances at a specific world exhibition. Generally speakin, world's fairs have generated a great deal of documentation, from official publications by the organisers to numerous journalistic reports. Students are instructed to search for traces of theatre performances in these materials, which are primarily available in the form of digital archives, and to research them so that, ideally, a picture of the phenomenon of the intertwining of theatre and world's fairs over several decades emerges within the framework of this course, which will at least be summarised in the presentation and discussion of the research results.