PERFORMANCE, POWER, AND IDENTITY
IN GHANA

Music 445 SISAF 490

Winter 2005

1:30-4:00 Thursday
Music Bldg. 213

Prof. Ter Ellingson

Office: 50 and 28D Music 543-7211

ellingsn@u.washington.edu

Ghana is the Third World in microcosm, caught up in the great 21^st-century clashes of global and local, religious and secular, tradition and change, individual and community. In all of this, Ghanaians see all around them many different pathways of constraint and opportunity that seem to point in every opposing direction, towards every imaginable future, in a society where people are relatively free to make important choices for themselves, even as they feel pushed and pulled in many directions at once by forces they may have little control over. No wonder that, with encouragement from their culture, Ghanaians dramatize their conflicts and their choices in performances that both mirror and reflect back upon the political, economic and spiritual powers that shape and empower their lives, through which they forge and declare their identities. This class will explore some of these performances and their power and effect in the lives of the people who create them. Prerequisites: none.

Don’t go here! Instead, visit the class website at http://faculty.washington.edu/ellingsn/Ghana_Perf.html