Women & Gender Studies/Disability Studies Students Collaborate on Deaf Theater Project with Irish University
Dr. Milo Obourn’s WMS 302 “Introduction to Intersectional Disability Studies” Fall 2023 students are collaborating with Dr. Kate McCarthy’s drama students at the South East Technological University in Waterford, Ireland to analyze a performance project based on the work of 1930s Deaf Irish playwright, Teresa Deevy.
Students in Dr. Obourn’s course are exchanging asynchronous analyses and image description ideas with Dr. McCarthy’s students in the second half of the fall 2023 semester. Dr. Obourn’s students bring insights from critical disability studies, while Dr. McCarthy’s students bring insights from drama studies and Irish performance histories.
Students are asked to interpret a recording of the performance piece The Possession Project, a collaborative feminist and inclusive interpretation of Teresa Deevy’s never performed ballet Possession by SETU faculty and students, CODA performance artist Amanda Coogan, Dublin Theater of the Deaf, and ISL interpreters. Students are also asked to create an accessible image description from a still and talk with each other about what kinds of bodies and movements are used in the performance and how those challenge our ideas about what drama, ballet, and performance are and who can and should be included within them.