Witnessing as an Ethics: Relationality as a Way Out of Survey Course Tourism

This reflective account looks back on 'Performance, Positionality, and Witnessing,' a course taught in Summer 2022, which engaged various Filipinx Canadian performance texts. The course encapsulated an experience in teaching performativity while also introducing students to the notion of witnessing -- that is, being cognisant of their positionality in bearing witness to diasporic experience encountered in performance text. As an intervention to 'regular' survey courses, 'Performance, Positionality, and Witnessing' challenged students' detachment from course material by inviting them to examine their entry point to material as readers, thinkers, and creators.