This seminar explores the potentially catastrophic “ends” of contemporary performance, the are, and dance through examining both real and fictional disaster narratives visible across these diverse art forms. Through aesthetic analysis, students will explore the root of catastrophe in tragedy, but also move beyond this designation; incorporating theories of catastrophe alongside cultural theory (queer, critical race,disability, and feminist theories), students will further contemplate the catastrophic imagination in contemporary age as it intersects with current cultural issues and global crises. Plays and performances will help to evidence how the depiction of human catastrophe engages audiences in moments of collective reckoning in environmental, political, and social collapse. We ask:How does catastrophe render visible the ends that are seemingly hard to imagine and yet present in our everyday lives? Through cross-disciplinary inquiry, this course explores instances of contemporary performance that challenge audiences and situate them within a decades-long conversation about humanity’s unique capacity for catastrophe. At the semester’s end, students will be given an opportunity to create an original work of performance in any medium that considers the problem of human catastrophe OR to compose an essay that analyzes an artwork of their own choosing. Students will be expected to attend a range of performance events around the city that engage with the course theme.Students will also engage with digital and video documentation of performances alongside critical theory and literary texts.