Racial literacy and performative pedagogies in the German theater practicum

Abstract

This article explores the potential and pitfalls of performative pedagogies for teaching literature that thematizes issues of race and racism and argues that racial literacy requires a rethinking of drama-pedagogical practice. An initial segment situates pedagogical discussions of race in North American German curricula within research on racial literacy and then considers the ethical limitations of the usual approaches from drama pedagogy (role-play and identification exercises) when addressing literature about or from minoritized communities. The second half of the article outlines a case study of a performance-oriented teaching unit in a German theater practicum course for German at the B2 level, which combined work on performing and staging poetry with a discussion of the Enlightenment's entanglement with white supremacy and scientific racism. Centering on Black German poet Philipp Khabo Köpsell's poem “The Brainage,” the unit raised the question of performative ethics, namely, how and whether the class, consisting of 11 white students and a white instructor, could ethically perform the poem in a live performance at the end of the semester. The article analyzes examples from student learning and the final live performance and makes the argument for performing the process of students’ encounter with literary form using theatrical means.