The Department of Performing and Media Arts leads students from all disciplines through artistic and scholarly explorations of live and mediated forms of creativity and expression. Students are challenged to think creatively, critically, and historically about the world around them as they identify and interpret the power of image, sound, gesture, and movement and cultivate their own artistic and academic voices.
We are excited to welcome you to Cornell or welcome you back! All of us here in Performing and Media Arts (PMA) look forward to helping you find opportunities to make your time in Ithaca more enriching, whether you are a budding performer, a seasoned auteur, an aspiring critic, or just a curious observer. Please use the page linked below as a springboard to the wealth of opportunities available to you in the Schwartz Center:
In late April, PMA Professor Austin Bunn travelled to Edinburgh and Glasgow Scotland to develop short film projects with Scotland’s unique Take Three program, which supports young filmmaker development through grants, labs, networking and workshops. He served as a mentor for six filmmaking teams at Take Three’s film incubator at a resort outside in Edinburgh.…
Cornell’s College of Arts & Sciences honors the winners of its 2026 teaching and advising awards. Faculty members Nicole Giannella, Karola Mészáros and Landon Schnabel stand out this year, earning major awards for excellence; many instructors and teaching assistants received recognition, as well.
PMA Associate Professor Christine Bacareza Balance was interviewed on This Filipino American Life (TFAL) podcast about Here Lies Love, a musical about the life of former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos, with concept and music by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. The project began as a song cycle, premiered off-Broadway at the Public Theater in…
PMA Professor J. Ellen Gainor will be delivering her paper, "The Echoes of Closing Doors, or, Why is the American Theatre Still Obsessed with Nora Helmer?" at the conference "Of Mutability and Malleability: Reimagining the Contours of US Theatre and Drama" to be hosted by the University of Toulouse in June.
Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' (the Cayuga Nation). The Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign Nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York state, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' dispossession, and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' people, past and present, to these lands and waters.
This land acknowledgment has been reviewed and approved by the traditional Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' leadership.
