Campus Courses

Bearing Witness: The Legacy of Jan Karski Today

Holocaust witness, Polish World War II hero, spy and diplomat: Jan Karski is one of the most influential and legendary Professors ever to teach at Georgetown University. This course explores Karski’s story and its contemporary resonance, centering around the filmed version of Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, a celebrated original theatrical production created by The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown and starring Oscar-Nominated actor David Strathairn, who will participate as a guest in the course.

Taught by Professor Ijeoma Njaka, Senior Learning Designer for
Transformational and Inclusive Initiatives at The Lab

Global performance & Politics TPST 2036

At a time when the world faces myriad challenges ranging from polarization to climate crisis to violent conflict and forced migration, artists and change-makers across the globe are finding innovative ways to humanize global politics through performance. This course offers students a chance to engage firsthand with artistic practices, projects, and methods –as well as with a diverse range of cutting-edge artists from around the world who are finding resilient and transformative models for how performance can operate as a humanizing force in the realm of politics and world affairs.
Taught by Professor Derek Goldman, Artistic and Executive Director/ Co-founder of The Lab.

Public & Cultural Diplomacy DIAF 5070

Public diplomacy is an instrument used by states and non-state actors to
understand others’ cultures, attitudes, and behavior; build and manage
relationships; and influence thoughts and actions to advance their interests and values. Drawing on the experiences of diplomats and a growing body of literature, we will explore what this means for the changing actors, issues, methods, and environments of diplomacy in the 21st century.

Taught Cynthia Schneider, Co-founding Director of The Lab

Performance and Narration of Pandemic (3 Credits)

This interdisciplinary course employs techniques of devised performance to engage narratives from various pandemics, including both the COVID pandemic and the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918, as a catalyst and developmental research process for a new performance collaboration between Georgetown’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, the School of Health, Global Health Institute, and DC’s Mosaic Theater Company.

Time: Tuesday 3:30 PM – 6:00 PM
Instructor: Derek Goldman

Dialogue and Difference: Performing One Another

This innovative 5-credit course, co-taught by Lab co-director Derek Goldman, Lab Think Tank member Daniel Brumberg, and Professor Cory Grewell of Patrick Henry College, offered students the opportunity to use performance to listen across ideological divides. Dialogue and Difference grew out of In Your Shoes, a Lab project that brought together students from Georgetown University and Patrick Henry College, a conservative Christian school in rural Virginia. Like In Your Shoes, this course used theater games and performance to create space for meaningful dialogue about complex political issues. The cornerstone of the course was ‘performing one another,’ an exercise in listening and performance in which two partners listen, record, transcribe, and perform the stories of one another.

In Your Shoes: Dialogue and Facilitation in Our Campus Community (2 credits)

How might the Georgetown campus or experience change when we engage across silos and divides? This course will focus on facilitating the IYS experience between students, faculty, and staff on our campus.

Time: Friday 12 PM – 3PM, February 24 – April 28, 2023
Instructor: Ijeoma Njaka and Ryann Craig

TPST/DANC 210: Empathy & Embodiment (3 Credits)

In this studio class we will investigate the many modes of movement that bring us together as humans across linguistic, cultural, generational, and national borders. We explore the concept of the body as a culture-bearer and its movement as a mode of connection with the otherwise “other.” Students will learn to use empathy as a tool in everything from psychology to diplomacy. .

Time: Wednesday 11:00 AM – 1:30 PM
Instructor: Emma Jaster

In Your Shoes: Embodiment & Dialogue (1 Credit)

Encounters in Global Performance, offered in Spring 2020, was a course produced in partnership with the Kennedy Center. Co-taught by Derek Goldman and Ijeoma Njaka, this course gave students the opportunity to watch and discuss performances at the intersection of politics and performance.

Centennial Lab: Politics and Performance

Taught by Lab co-directors Derek Goldman and Cynthia Schneider, Politics and Performance combined theater exercises, live performances, and visits from theatermakers, artists, diplomats, and policy experts to expose students to the rich intersection of artistic performance and international politics. The course was centered on a spring break trip to Cambodia where students spoke with artists, politicians, and academics working to rebuild Cambodia’s social fabric and engage their troubled history with genocide.