The Broadway Effect: Musicals and the Shaping of American Culture

This course examines how Broadway musicals have participated in shaping what America imagines itself to be. From West Side Story, to Rent, to Hamilton, students will study landmark productions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to analyze how song, narrative, performance, and spectacle have reframed cultural debates, proposed new social possibilities, and challenged dominant narratives even while operating within the commercial pressures of mass market industries. Through discussion of musical scripts and scores, live and recorded productions, and selected dramaturgical and cultural theory, students will investigate Broadway’s distinctive aesthetic and ideological “effects,” including its role in constructing ideas of race, gender, nationhood, and belonging. The course culminates in a choice between a critical research paper or an original artistic project.