Performances of Dignity: In Law, Medicine and Theater

Performances of Dignity: In Law, Medicine and Theater

This lecture focuses on the intersection of discourses on dignity: legal, ethical, social, medical and performative.  We talk about dignified life, death, and old age; the dignity of the human corpse and human beings. But what is dignity and do we need it? Romanska argues that in order to answer any questions about our post human future (and whether or not it will deprive us of our dignity), we need to first understand what dignity is, what it has been, and what it might become.

Magda Romanska is an Associate Professor of Theatre Studies and Dramaturgy at Emerson College in Boston, MA, and the Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief of  TheTheatreTimes.com, the largest global digital theatre portal, for which she won the 2018 Elliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy.  Her research focuses on theatre, transmedia, new media dramaturgy, and post humanism.  She has taught at Harvard University, Yale School of Drama, Cornell University, and Emerson College. Romanska is the author or editor of four critically acclaimed theatre books, including The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor, Reader in Comedy: An Anthology of Theory and Criticism;  and The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy, a leading handbook of dramaturgy.  Her fifth book, an edited anthology, Theatre Machine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context is forthcoming from NUP.

Tuesday,  September 4,  4:00 – 6:00 pm,  Rubenstein Library Room 153

Sponsored by the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies and Humanities Futures of the Franklin Humanities Institute