ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author demonstrates how students as spectators can be empowered through performative audiencing. In the course, performative audiencing takes the form of personal narratives, that is, written statements in the scheme of essays of 1500-2000 words on one selected film, which was watched and discussed in the class, that was especially appealing to them, and with which students could identify in some way. Some graduate and postgraduate students had been used to traditional styles of teaching and learning. The author presents a choice of personal accounts of students' lived experience that draw on the films discussed during the semester of teaching. Thematically, students' personal narratives can be placed under three rubrics: disability, sexuality, and ethnicity. Each of these is then linked with one of the films, which takes up the problematics of disability, sexuality, or ethnicity.