Courses

Course ID	Title	Offered
PMA 1125	FWS: The Undead...Live! Vampires on Stage Vampires. Vampires are everywhere. This course hunts the dangerous and subversive figure of the vampire across a variety of pages, stages and screens. From raucous stage comedies, to lush cinematic epics and politically savvy television--and all the Draculas that have come and gone in between--we will explore how the vampire changes with medium, period, and genre. Students will be asked to consider why vampires emerge in particular historical and contemporary moments, and what cultural anxieties they articulate, as well as how the vampire is constructed, appropriated, and performed. By engaging with course texts, students will develop strategies for attentive reading and thoughtful writing. Assignments will vary in style and format, and will focus on critical thinking, preparation, clear prose, and papers structured around well-supported claims. Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG) Full details for PMA 1125 - FWS: The Undead...Live! Vampires on Stage Vampires.	Fall.
PMA 1168	FWS: Your Fave is Problematic: Media, Fandom, and Race Do you enjoy watching video essays about your problematic faves on YouTube or TikTok and want to try your hand at making one of your own? Essays offering critical analysis of media objects and fandoms are an increasingly popular form of user-generated content and information dissemination. This Fisrt-Year Writing Seminar will give students a chance to dip their toes into discourse surrounding media and fandom as it relates to race. Students will write on the topic of race while engaging readings from the fields of Fandom, Performance, and Media Studies. The ultimate goal of this course is to provide students with tools to effectively communicate critical analysis using their favorite media objects and/or fandoms using clear, concise, accessible writing. Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG) Full details for PMA 1168 - FWS: Your Fave is Problematic: Media, Fandom, and Race	Fall.
PMA 1179	FWS: Witch Hunts, Welfare, and Warfare: A Cultural History of Reproductive Medicine The repeal of Roe v. Wade marks a reproductive crisis in the US, but reproductive injustice has a long history. While the Pill and the IUD are crucial for reproductive choice, they have also been tools of reproductive control. This course offers a critical and cultural history of reproductive medicine and its relationship to patriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism. Students will learn about the birth of modern gynecology, the entanglements between progressive welfare and fascist warfare, and organized resistance against reproductive control. We will engage a variety of historical media and read texts from the history of race and gender in science, media studies, Marxism, and Black and Indigenous feminisms. Assignments invite students to write formal papers and produce their own creative multimedia work. Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG) Full details for PMA 1179 - FWS: Witch Hunts, Welfare, and Warfare: A Cultural History of Reproductive Medicine	Fall.
PMA 1180	FWS: Femininities: Race, Feminism, and Media Is beauty, sexiness, Barbie, or the color pink feminine? What or who defines femininity? In our contemporary culture, such ideas are complicated by the performances of drag queens, sex workers, divas, and queer/trans artists of color. By exploring programs like the Real Housewives series, the film Hustlers, spoken word poetry, visual art, and related critical materials by such writers as bell hooks and Audre Lorde, this class will help you better understand the cultural politics of femininity in its relations to race and feminism. Gender expression and our responses to it are shaped by social and political forces that include race, migration, colonialism, and sexuality. Engaging such perspectives, we will write about our favorite divas, make zines, and analyze together films and other popular media forms. Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG) Full details for PMA 1180 - FWS: Femininities: Race, Feminism, and Media	Fall.
PMA 1181	FWS: Love and the Environment How does love shape an environment? How do we perceive the space where love ends and the environment begins, or can we? How are relationships co-creating space? With what can we cultivate a greater intimacy? These are some of the questions we will explore creatively and rhetorically this semester. We will consider "love" from the theoretical framework of black feminist, queer, and indigenous thought to expand the concept from western romantic notions to explore intimacies of various formations—platonic, communal, familial, spiritual, natural--through the lens of ecopoetics. I use the term 'environment' to invoke scene/setting, natural/ecological perspectives, and interpersonal space. We will engage with varieties of text--poetry to performance art to film--and have 6 writing assignments, 5 essays and 1 experimental work, with opportunities for revision. Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG) Full details for PMA 1181 - FWS: Love and the Environment	Fall.
PMA 1182	FWS: Speaking Bodies, Dancing Knowledge in the Caribbean This course examines the pasts, presents, and futures of dance in the Caribbean. From nightclub performances to sacred rituals, we will consider how factors such as discrimination, tourism, migration, and globalization have impacted various dance forms and the ways in which they are staged, practiced, or experienced today. We will watch documentary films, stage performances, and music videos that feature influential artists such as Katherine Dunham, Alicia Alonso, Celia Cruz, Ivy Queen, Romeo Santos, and Bad Bunny. We will also read critical dance studies articles to help us develop informed written reflections. Students will write five formal essays discussing different dance styles and issues related to migration, tourism, globalization, and race/gender/class relations in the Caribbean, and in preparation, submit topic proposals, drafts, and peer-review exercises. Full details for PMA 1182 - FWS: Speaking Bodies, Dancing Knowledge in the Caribbean	Fall.
PMA 1410	Media Production Laboratory The Media Production Lab course is a series of self-contained lecture/workshops on various topics in the production of film and video on-set and on-location. The workshops will be hands on experience with cameras, lighting and sound equipment, exploring the technique of cinematography as well as, lighting, sound, and grip techniques for the studio and in the field. We will cover specific areas such as dollies and rigging, location sound, and production protocol. Open to all skill levels. Full details for PMA 1410 - Media Production Laboratory	Fall, Spring.
PMA 1610	Production Technology Laboratory This technology lab will provide students with a foundation of the production process through experiential learning of scenographic practices. Students will learn about the technical production processes as they pertain too: scenery fabrication and installation, properties fabrication, costume fabrication, and lighting installation (primarily lighting for live performance). Full details for PMA 1610 - Production Technology Laboratory	Fall, Spring.
PMA 1611	Rehearsal and Performance Students participating in a PMA creative project led by a faculty member or PMA Guest Artist can earn PMA 1611 credit. Full details for PMA 1611 - Rehearsal and Performance	Fall, Spring.
PMA 2100	Introduction to Performing and Media Arts This course is designed to offer students a broad, foundational introduction to the mission of the Department of Performing and Media Arts. With a focus both on making artistic work in mediated forms and in live performance and on the critical methods for studying such artwork, we explore a variety of topics and concepts, from composition and gesture to sound and movement—and beyond. Joined by visiting guest experts from all across the PMA faculty, the instructors usher students through a range of approaches to creative authorship, design, embodied performance, history, and theory. Organized around a series of keywords, including adaptation, representation, transformation, and world-building, the course also foregrounds ways of thinking about and with categories of identity and social relations, such as ability, age, class, ethnicity, gender, race, and sexuality. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 2100 - Introduction to Performing and Media Arts	Fall.
PMA 2221	Contemporary Movement Practices Contemporary Movement Practices is an intermediate-level studio immersion in contemporary concert dance genres and methodologies germane to the 21st-century field. In-depth modules will extract and explore most notably from Bartenieff Fundamentals℠ and Countertechnique®, as well as ripen the sensibility and capacity for current trends and approaches to dynamic floorwork, such as Flying-Low®. The objective is to cultivate and champion a dynamic anatomy and body consciousness built on learned perception, sensation, and organization. This is achieved through the experiential research and framing of Total Body Connectivity, which is based on the perennial work of Irmgard Bartenieff: Breath, Head/Tail, Core/Distal, Upper/Lower Body, Body Halves, and Diagonal. Full details for PMA 2221 - Contemporary Movement Practices	Fall, Spring.
PMA 2280	Dance Improvisation The training and practice of skills for the spontaneous collaborative composition of movement performance. Students hone their abilities to invent and respond to each other and their environment to produce dances that engage their audience. This course coaxes inspiration, seeking to make it reliable and to keep it surprising. It offers the possibility of "training" one's movement instincts to respond relevantly and with spontaneity. Full details for PMA 2280 - Dance Improvisation	Fall.
PMA 2300	Dance Composition Students compose and present short studies that are discussed and reworked. Problems are defined and explored through class improvisations. Informal showing at end of semester. Includes informal showing of work. Weekly assignments in basic elements of choreography. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 2300 - Dance Composition	Fall, Spring.
PMA 2403	Africa in Hollywood In Eddie Murphy's Coming to America, Africa is a place of nobility, where even lions are at peace with lambs. In contrast, Leonardo DeCaprio's Blood Diamond is a violent look at the role the demand for diamonds has played in destabilizing mineral-rich African countries. But if Hollywood has long been concerned with depicting Africa in particular ways, African filmmakers are at the same time creating their own stories. Popular and scholarly film critics are also contributing to the battle over who speaks for Africa. In this course we will explore these competing images of Africa, questions of imagination versus reality, and the extent to which artists should, if at all, be responsible to the subject of their art. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, GLC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 2403 - Africa in Hollywood	Fall or Spring.
PMA 2404	Story Ideation, Creation, and Development This course centers on story creation, development and presentation. Students learn what makes a great story for the screen and how to take it from concept to pitch. Over the course of the semester through writing assignments and discussion, students practice creating, developing, analyzing, and pitching original stories for film and television. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 2404 - Story Ideation, Creation, and Development	Fall.
PMA 2435	New Visions in African Cinema This undergraduate course introduces the formal and topical innovations that African cinema has experienced since its inception in the 1960s. Sections will explore, among others, Nollywood, sci-fi, and ideological cinema. Films include: Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako, Mohamed Camara's Dakan, Djibril Diop Mambéty's Touki-Bouki, Cheikh Oumar Sissoko's Finzan, Anne-Laure Folly's Women with Open Eyes, Ousmane Sembène's Camp de Thiaroye, Jean-Pierre Bekolo's Quartier Mozart. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, GLC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 2435 - New Visions in African Cinema	Fall.
PMA 2560	American Cinema From the beginning of the twentieth century to the present moment, movies - and in particular Hollywood - have profoundly influenced the ways in which people see, think and talk about the world. Focusing mostly on Hollywood film, this course introduces the study of American cinema from multiple perspectives: as an economy and mode of production; as an art form that produces particular aesthetic styles; as a cultural institution that comments on contemporary issues and allows people to socialize. We will consider the rise of Hollywood in the age of mass production; the star system; the introduction of sound and the function of the soundtrack; Hollywood's rivalry with television; censorship; the rise of independent film, etc. Weekly screenings introduce major American genres (e.g. science fiction, film noir, the musical) and directors (e.g. Hitchcock, Kubrick, Tarantino). Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 2560 - American Cinema	Fall or Spring.
PMA 2610	Production Crew Laboratory Learn what it means to run a live show. Participate as part of a team to ensure all the elements work together and on time. Learn the intricacies of collaborating with a production group to create a unified artistic vision. Program lighting, sound, or video boards, or participate as a dresser, stage crew member, or assistant stage manager. Full details for PMA 2610 - Production Crew Laboratory	Fall, Spring.
PMA 2611	Stage Management Laboratory This lab will give students practical experience as an assistant stage manager in the organization and management of a theatrical or mediated production; in rehearsals, in technical rehearsals as the scenographic elements are implemented, and in performance or filming for a fully supported department production under the supervision of the staff stage manager. The course can only be applied to a fully supported department production with a full rehearsal period and performance. Full details for PMA 2611 - Stage Management Laboratory	Fall, Spring.
PMA 2670	Shakespeare This course aims to give students a good historical and critical grounding in Shakespeare's drama and its central and continuing place in Renaissance culture and beyond. We will read poetry and primarily plays representing the shape of Shakespeare's career as it moves through comedies, histories, tragedies, and a romance. Specific plays include The Two Gentleman of Verona, Richard II, Henry IV (Part 1), Henry V, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Othello, Macbeth and The Tempest. We will focus on dramatic forms (genres), Shakespeare's themes, and social and historical contexts. The course combines lectures and hands-on work in weekly discussions. While we will view some scenes from film adaptations, the main focus is on careful close interaction with the language of the plays. This class counts toward the pre-1800 requirement for English majors. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 2670 - Shakespeare	Fall.
PMA 2701	Media Arts, Performance, and Sound: Intersections This interdisciplinary course offers an introduction to the methods employed in media arts, sound and performance. It provides a comprehensive exploration of the strategies and historical context of these disciplines. Students will engage in an interdisciplinary studio setting with a specific focus on one of these areas. Through hands-on experience, they will delve into contemporary artistic practices, honing their technical skills to develop and realize their creative projects. Potential topics covered include video and animation, digital image production, sound art, performance art, and movement Full details for PMA 2701 - Media Arts, Performance, and Sound: Intersections	Fall, Spring.
PMA 2800	Introduction to Acting An introduction to the actor's technique and performance skills, exploring the elements necessary to begin training as an actor, i.e., observation, concentration, and imagination. Focus is on physical and vocal exercises, improvisation, and text and character. There is required play reading, play attendance, and some scene study. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, ETM-AS) (CA-AG, KCM-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 2800 - Introduction to Acting	Fall, Spring.
PMA 3000	Independent Study Independent study allows students the opportunity to pursue special interests not treated in regularly scheduled courses. A faculty member, who becomes the student's instructor for the course, must approve the student's program of study and agree to provide continuing supervision of the work. Full details for PMA 3000 - Independent Study	Fall, Spring.
PMA 3010	Latinx Theatre Production In this course, we will develop a toolbox of performance techniques based on methods developed in the Spanish-speaking and Latinx contexts. These techniques will be used in preparing short, original, collectively-created or scripted plays for production and public presentation in the October 2024 regional microtheater festival in upstate New York and/or the annual downtown Ithaca holiday pastorela in December. Full details for PMA 3010 - Latinx Theatre Production	Fall.
PMA 3226	Global Dance and Decolonizing Movement How does the social production of dance reflect its historical context? Is dance inherently political? What is the meaning of the "beautiful" in dance? Beginning with 16th century court dances, we will explore how aesthetics have been aligned both with and against politics in various periods, across borders, and genres of the performing body, looking at dance as insider's diplomacy and outsider's rebellion. Is modern dance a democratization of the art form? Is postmodern dance a discourse of traditions? This course is designed to promote a critical appreciation of dance, its values and its ambitions, by developing a historical and cultural understanding. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, GLC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3226 - Global Dance and Decolonizing Movement	Fall.
PMA 3241	Site-Specific to Immersive Dance Theater: Choreography for Unconventional Formats and Spaces Site-Specific to Immersive Dance Theater: Choreographing for Unconventional Formats and Spaces is a research-to-practice course reconsidering the function, philosophy, and reality of an evolving stage. What is the practice and purpose of performance beyond the traditional proscenium? How does the meaning of choreography operate and expand as its format alters and transforms? How does the performer properly exercise and prepare themselves to address their work in new and different surroundings? Audiences? Students will confront and respond to the psychological, political, historical, and communal orientation and potential of dance in non-traditional spaces. Using exercises based on reactive versus relational movement, students will distinguish between the making of site-sympathetic, site-specific, site-adaptable, environmental, installation, interactive, interventional, and immersive modes of dance performance, production, and world-making Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3241 - Site-Specific to Immersive Dance Theater: Choreography for Unconventional Formats and Spaces	Fall.
PMA 3463	Contemporary Television This course considers issues, approaches, and complexities in the contemporary television landscape. As television has changed drastically over the past fifteen years, this course provides students with a deeper understanding of the changes in narratives, technologies, forms, and platforms that structure/restructure the televisual world. Students will grapple with how "new media" forms such as web-series and on-demand internet streaming services have changed primetime television. We will balance our look at television shows with nuanced readings about the televisual media industry. By watching, analyzing, and critiquing the powerful medium of television, students will situate their understanding within a broader consideration of the medium's regulation, production, distribution, and reception in the network and post-network era. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3463 - Contemporary Television	Fall.
PMA 3464	Representational Ethics in Film and Television This course is designed to explore the varied ways that race and gender intersect with the media industry. While common industrial logic suggests these descriptors of identity are not a factor in terms of its business models and assumptions, the reality is much more complex. Race, as well as gender, class, and sexuality, play large parts in how media industries function and in informing and shaping audience expectations and assumptions. Thus, the time spent in class will largely consist of deconstructing several media industries, including film, television, and new media to show just how race, as well as other modes of identity such as gender, sexuality, and class, operate within it. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3464 - Representational Ethics in Film and Television	Fall.
PMA 3510	Documentary Production Fundamentals This introductory course familiarizes students with documentary filmmaking and audiovisual modes of knowledge production. Through lectures, screenings, workshops, and labs, students will develop single-camera digital video production and editing skills. Weekly camera, sound, and editing exercises will enhance students' documentary filmmaking techniques and their reflexive engagement with sensory scholarship. Additionally, students will be introduced to nonfiction film theory from the perspective of production and learn to critically engage and comment on each other's work. Discussions of debates around visual ethnography, the politics of representation, and filmmaking ethics will help students address practical storytelling dilemmas. Over the course of the semester, students conduct pre-production research and develop visual storytelling skills as they build a portfolio of short video assignments in preparation for continued training in documentary production. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3510 - Documentary Production Fundamentals	Fall.
PMA 3515	Video and New Media: Art, Theory, Politics The course will offer an overview of video art, alternative documentary video, and digital installation and networked art. It will analyze four phases of video and new media: (1) the development of video from its earliest turn away from television; (2) video's relation to art and installation; (3) video's migration into digital art; (4) the relation of video and new media to visual theory and social movements. Screenings will include early political and feminist video (Ant Farm, Rosler, Paper Tiger TV, Jones), conceptual video of the '80s and '90s (Vasulka, Lucier, Viola, Hill), gay and multicultural video of the '90s (Muntadas, Riggs, Piper, Fung, Parmar), networked and activist new media of the 21st century (Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Disturbance Theater, SubRosa, Preemptive Media). Secondary theoretical readings on postmodernism, video theory, multicultural theory, and digital culture will provide students with a cultural and political context for the discussion of video and new media style, dissemination, and reception. Full details for PMA 3515 - Video and New Media: Art, Theory, Politics	Fall.
PMA 3535	TV Writing: Hour Long This is a one-semester workshop focusing on the foundational basics of writing for television, with an emphasis on the structure and process of creating a hour long script. Students will individually pitch and break an original episode, and develop an outline, first draft script and rewrite for an existing and currently running hour long television series. Additionally, all participants will work as a "writers' room" to give feedback and pitches on other students' projects. Students will have their work-in-progress read, analyzed, and discussed by all participants. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3535 - TV Writing: Hour Long	Fall.
PMA 3550	Global Cinema and Media Global Cinema and Media offers a survey of international film and media history from the late nineteenth century to today. Through a focus on key films and significant epochs, the course traces the evolution of form, style and genre, the medium's changing technologies and business models, as well as film and media's relation to broader cultural, social and political contexts. Screenings of narrative, documentary and experimental films and video will be accompanied by readings in film and media theory and history. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, GLC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3550 - Global Cinema and Media	Fall.
PMA 3555	Comics as a Medium What are comics? While it's easy to identify a cartoon, graphic novel, or comic book, it's hard to understand the wide world of comics. As a medium, comics are part of a global tradition of visual storytelling and sequential art, including premodern tapestries, early modern pamphlets, and modern children's books, political cartoons, and animated films. With a focus on the German-speaking world, we will examine a wide range of comics genres (e.g., fiction, history, autobiography, journalism, comix) and formats (e.g., books, strips, pamphlets, zines). Our discussions will address questions of taste, aesthetics, materiality, censorship, representation, and word-image relations. While we will primarily be reading and writing about comics and comics studies, students will also gain some exposure to making comics. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3555 - Comics as a Medium	Fall.
PMA 3570	Film and Video Production I An introduction to filmmaking, students will learn to create compelling characters, as well as develop strong storytelling skills through basic character and story development and breakdown, cinematography, lighting, sound and editing. Over the course of the semester, students will deconstruct and analyze visual culture in an effort to learn effective techniques in visual storytelling. Students will write, shoot and edit a series of dramatic narrative exercises, participating in the preproduction to post production processes. Students will collaborate and rotate through various roles. The course will culminate with the screening of the various course projects, in a public, open-campus event at the end of the semester. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3570 - Film and Video Production I	Fall, Spring.
PMA 3571	Documentary Filmmaking Documentary Filmmaking will equip. students with the knowledge to produce quality short, socially and culturally conscious, documentaries that express an interesting story. This course covers the aesthetic and technical fundamentals of directing and producing documentaries. It provides working tools to plan and tell your stories creatively, collaboratively, artistically and professionally. The goal is to produce quality productions designed as a stepping stone to more advanced projects. In the process, we will deeply discuss the principles, history, and ethics of documentary filmmaking. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3571 - Documentary Filmmaking	Fall.
PMA 3580	Cinematography and Visual Storytelling Film is a language that expresses the director's idea and cinematography is a key component of the language of film. You need to develop visual storytelling skills by blending lights, camera movements, frame composition, and color palette to use this film language to convey your idea. In this class we will learn the concept of visual strategies in filmmaking and cameras and lighting and research the various aspects of film cinematography. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3580 - Cinematography and Visual Storytelling	Fall.
PMA 3610	Creative Apprenticeship Based on previous coursework and experience, students may be offered the opportunity to participate as an apprentice in a mentored PMA creative project. The apprentice experience and number of credits will be defined by the needs of the project, the area of study, and the mentor. Apprentice roles may include Assistant Director, Assistant Designer, Assistant Choreographer, Dramaturg, or others, as determined by the mentor. Successful completion of this course is necessary for application to the AUPR program. Full details for PMA 3610 - Creative Apprenticeship	Fall, Spring.
PMA 3614	Creative Character Design A course working on the creation and development of characters on paper. The character designs explored will not be bound by the limits of the human body or physical costumes, but rather will push the limits of character imagery to that which could ultimately be achieved in print illustration, sequential art, traditional animation, digital special effects and animation, video gaming, various forms of puppetry and animatronic forms, depending on the student's area of interest. (Students will not engage in animation, or three-dimensional crafting of characters, but rather will develop the design content that could then be applied to these forms). Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3614 - Creative Character Design	Fall.
PMA 3630	Scenic and Lighting Design for Performance Studio I The Scenic and Lighting designers are responsible for creating 'the visual world' of the play. From sketches to models, from groundplans to light plots, this intro-level hands-on, project-based course introduces students to the scenic and lighting design processes through text analysis, visual research, beginning drafting practices, model building, light laboratories and beyond. Intended to provide a foundation in scenic and lighting design practices, the teachings of this course will have future applications in all performance disciplines including Theatre, Dance, Film, and Television. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3630 - Scenic and Lighting Design for Performance Studio I	Fall.
PMA 3633	Out of Body Performance: Puppets and Animation From the ancient Javanese traditions of Wayang to the Muppets; from Emile Cohl to Pixar: Puppeteers and Animators are performer designers. In this course students will explore and discover the global canvas and world history of puppetry, animation, and their respective intersections through a combination of lectures, practice and research culminating in a final narrative project. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3633 - Out of Body Performance: Puppets and Animation	Fall.
PMA 3661	Costume Design Studio II This course will explore unconventional costume designs for theatre, dance, and mediated performance. It will deal with the special considerations found in some plays and performance pieces, such as the theatricalization of non-human subjects (animals, plants, elements, magical creatures, etc.), the visualization of music, or the support or enhancement of movement. It will cover alternative ways to create character through costume, make-up, masks, and wearable forms of puppetry. Students will be responsible for script reading, character analysis, written "concepts", visual research, and rendering of design sketches for three projects, as well as other exercises. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3661 - Costume Design Studio II	Fall.
PMA 3680	Sound Design Covering the basics of digital audio, bioacoustics, psychoacoustics and sound design, as they apply to theatre, film and music production. Students create soundscapes for text and moving image using ProTools software. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3680 - Sound Design	Fall, Spring.
PMA 3711	Sitcom Jews: Ethnic Representation on Television, 1948-Present Jews have been on TV since the beginning of the medium – over 70 years – and have made decisions about how they are represented. What kind of Jews do we put on screen, and do they actually represent Jews in America? What about the representation of other ethnic and cultural groups? What can we learn from the history of Jewish television that might apply to Black, Latinx, Muslim, LGBTQ, Asian and other communities as they present themselves to the American public? "Sitcom Jews" uses media analysis, theoretical discussion, and student writing to examine a huge range of TV, starting with classic sitcoms ("The Goldbergs" (1948), "All in the Family, and "Bridget Loves Bernie"), continuing through current Jewish TV shows ("Broad City", "Transparent", "Curb Your Enthusiasm"), and adding a range of ethnic television ("The Jeffersons", "Black-ish", "Insecure", "Ramy", "Will & Grace", "Never Have I Ever"). Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3711 - Sitcom Jews: Ethnic Representation on Television, 1948-Present	Fall.
PMA 3740	Parody In A Theory of Parody, Linda Hutcheon defines parody broadly as "repetition with critical difference, which marks difference rather than similarity." Taking a cue from Hutcheon, we will consider parody as a form of meaning making that is not necessarily used in the service of ridicule. Rather, we will examine a number of late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century imitative works in order to distinguish the rich variety of political agendas and aesthetic rationales for recent parody. An emphasis on postmodern or contemporary performances and media that renovate images, ideas, and icons from modernism and modernity will unite our otherwise diverse efforts. Some of these efforts will also highlight what happens when an artist takes up a work made for one platform (for example, theatre, performance art, installation, cinema, television, the Web) and parodies it in another. Creators and works under consideration may range from Christopher Durang, Split Britches, and Pig Iron Theatre Company to The Simpsons, Cookie's Fortune, and Strindberg and Helium. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3740 - Parody	Fall.
PMA 3750	Global Theatre and Performance This course is designed to introduce students to a range of historical, cross-cultural, and transnational performance texts, theories, and practices; to motivate students to examine the broad social, political, cultural, and economic contexts in which performances take place; and to familiarize students with major methodologies and paradigms for the creation, spectatorship, and interpretation of performances. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, GLC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3750 - Global Theatre and Performance	Fall.
PMA 3757	American Drama and Theatre Explores major American playwrights from 1900 to 1960, introducing students to American theatre as a significant part of modern American cultural history. We will consider the ways in which theatre has contributed to the construction and deconstruction of a national identity. Similarly, we will examine the influence of the American Theatre on and in film. We will pay special attention to the social, political, and aesthetic contexts of the time period and discuss the shifting popularity of dramatic forms, including melodrama, realism, expressionism, absurdism, and the folk play, in the American theatre canon. Authors include O'Neill, Glaspell, Odets, Rice, Hellman, Hughes, Miller, Williams, and Albee, among others. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3757 - American Drama and Theatre	Fall.
PMA 3800	Acting II Practical exploration of the actor's craft through exercises in physical and psychological action, improvisation and scene study. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3800 - Acting II	Fall, Spring.
PMA 3804	Black Sound and Visual Culture In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will study the strategies that sound artists, composers, visual artists, writers, and filmmakers have employed to use Black sounds as a sign. We will explore intersections between sound and image throughout the African diaspora. Intersections in question include the place of sound art within different Black musical and visual traditions, Black music as a resource for painting and sculpture, the visual design of Black music projects, the Black soundscape and the built environment, acoustic ecology and mapping in Black communities, and African diasporic filmmaking as a sonic art form. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3804 - Black Sound and Visual Culture	Fall.
PMA 3841	Immersive Performance: Investigating the Experiential The course traces the history and innovation of the Immersive Theatre Movement. These 21st century projects eliminate "the stage" as the primary location for performance to prioritize more experiential interactive audience engagements- with live-ness and active participation as fundamental goals. Working as collaborative think tank, students will engage, explore and specify examples set by artists such as Kara Walker, RA Walden, Coco Fusco and Marina Abramovics and Tania El Khoury evoking and expanding the definitions of experiential. They will examine the work of companies such as PIEHOLE, PUNCHDRUNK (SLEEP NO MORE), THIRD RAIL PROJECTS (THEN SHE FELL) and EN GARDE ARTS, SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE companies seeking to re-create the relationship between performer and spectator focusing on sensory engagement, visceral engagement and accessible spectacle a variety of approach to stimulate and reawaken performativity - expanding theatre towards multimedia applications, AR/VR and also solo interactive and site specific processes intended to surprise startle and instigate. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3841 - Immersive Performance: Investigating the Experiential	Fall.
PMA 3880	Fundamentals of Directing I Focused, practical exercises teach the student fundamental staging techniques that bring written text to theatrical life. A core objective is to increase the student's awareness of why and how certain stage events communicate effectively to an audience. Each student directs a number of exercises as well as a short scene. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 3880 - Fundamentals of Directing I	Fall.
PMA 4000	Senior Studio In this advanced undergraduate-level seminar, all senior majors synthesize four years of study in a collaborative intellectual and artistic project with the faculty. Over the course of the fall semester, students conceive and produce work for presentation to the public in the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. Students also generate a supporting scholarly matrix for that work, and their collective genesis of material integrates the major's four rubrics (history, theory, and criticism; creative authorship; design; and embodied performance). As a crucible for artistic and intellectual collaboration, the senior studio may emphasize an area of study, a period, a text, or a theme. The studio's organizing emphasis will be specific to ongoing, pressing inquiries in the disciplines of performing and media arts. Full details for PMA 4000 - Senior Studio	Fall.
PMA 4461	Genres, Platforms, Media How do questions of genre persist and evolve in the age of digital media and A.I.? To what extent do we choose our genres, and in what ways do they choose us? How do genres, platforms, and media intersect and inform one another? What hierarchies do they establish, and to what purposes? Moving among a range of genres and sub-genres, poetry, fiction, film, and multimedia, websites and streaming services, this course will explore the accelerating interplay of genres, platforms, and media, and the increasingly pervasive role of A.I., in contemporary culture and politics. Catalog Distribution: (GLC-AS) (CA-AG) Full details for PMA 4461 - Genres, Platforms, Media	Fall.
PMA 4670	Shakespeare's Hamlet: The Seminar The most studied and written about work in Western Literature outside the Bible, Hamlet according to Harold Bloom, is our secular savior and our ambassador to death. This course centers on a close reading of the play. Through research and assigned readings the course tests theoretical viewpoints about the play against the text itself by reading the theory in relationship to the production history. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 4670 - Shakespeare's Hamlet: The Seminar	Fall.
PMA 4671	Funny Business: Stand Up Comedy and Its Social, Political, and Cultural Importance This course will explore the cultural, political and social ramifications of stand-up comedy through the lens of twentieth and twenty-first century stand up comedians. Because of streaming services, Stand Up is more accessible than ever to a wider audience. Too, streamed video is not subject to the censorship rules of broadcast television so the wider array of subject matter and the way that subject can be presented is direct and fearless, making comics not just entertainers, but cultural influencers in a much broader way that earlier cultural critics, such as Lenny Bruce and Moms Mabley could only imagine. This newfound influence makes Stand Up comedians and their comedy ripe for study, not only within a cultural context but also as a part of free-speech arguments. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 4671 - Funny Business: Stand Up Comedy and Its Social, Political, and Cultural Importance	Fall.
PMA 4695	Queer Archives and Archiving Queerness This course contemplates challenges associated with researching and representing LGBTQ+ pasts. We approach this topic from several angles: 1) by asking what constitutes "queer" and "trans" in different historical contexts and different geographical locations, when sexuality and gender are by their nature fluid; 2) by training in LGBTQ+ archival methods; and 3) by engagement with queer and trans artivists who make archives central to their praxis. We will visit Cornell's Human Sexuality collection, explore online repositories and academic databases (e.g., ONE and Cengage), and consider archive-based artistic projects (e.g., Killjoy's Castle and MOTHA). Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 4695 - Queer Archives and Archiving Queerness	Fall.
PMA 4801	Advanced Studies in Acting Techniques Advanced acting students will expand their skills using targeted approaches and methodologies of the instructors' choosing to develop scripted and/or original material for in-class study and presentation. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 4801 - Advanced Studies in Acting Techniques	Fall.
PMA 4835	Performance Studies: Theories and Methods An understanding of performance as object and lens, modality and method, is integral to scholarship and research across the humanities and social sciences. Charting the advent and defining principles of performance studies, this course explores the interdisciplinary history of the field, including its association with anthropology, visual studies, theater, gender studies, sociology, psychology, literature, philosophy, and critical race studies. This class examines performance as a means of creative expression, a mode of critical inquiry, and an avenue for public engagement. We will attend to both the practice of performance - as gesture, behavior, habit, event, artistic expression, and social drama - and the study of performance - through ethnographic observation, spectatorship, documentation, reproduction, analysis, and writing strategies. Through a study of research paradigms and key issues related to performance, we will explore not only what this highly contested term "is" and "does," but when and how, for whom, and under what circumstances. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for PMA 4835 - Performance Studies: Theories and Methods	Fall.
PMA 4950	Honors Research Tutorial I First of a two-semester sequence (the second is PMA 4951) for seniors engaged in an honors project. Honor guidelines and form. Full details for PMA 4950 - Honors Research Tutorial I	Fall, Spring.
PMA 4951	Honors Research Tutorial II Second of a two-semester sequence (the first is PMA 4950) for students engaged in an honors project. Full details for PMA 4951 - Honors Research Tutorial II	Fall, Spring.
PMA 4952	Undergraduate Internship Academic credit can only be awarded for unpaid internships. Students must submit an Application for Academic Credit by April 15. The Application for Academic Credit must be received/approved prior to the start of the internship. If the internship opportunity is deemed eligible for academic credit, the student pursues the internship during the summer months and enrolls in this course the fall semester immediately following the summer internship. A written evaluation of the internship experience is required. Find complete information and application forms on the department website. Full details for PMA 4952 - Undergraduate Internship	Fall.
PMA 5804	Black Sound and Visual Culture In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will study the strategies that sound artists, composers, visual artists, writers, and filmmakers have employed to use Black sounds as a sign. We will explore intersections between sound and image throughout the African diaspora. Intersections in question include the place of sound art within different Black musical and visual traditions, Black music as a resource for painting and sculpture, the visual design of Black music projects, the Black soundscape and the built environment, acoustic ecology and mapping in Black communities, and African diasporic filmmaking as a sonic art form. Full details for PMA 5804 - Black Sound and Visual Culture	Fall.
PMA 6010	Latinx Theatre Production In this course, we will develop a toolbox of performance techniques based on methods developed in the Spanish-speaking and Latinx contexts. These techniques will be used in preparing short, original, collectively-created or scripted plays for production and public presentation in the October 2024 regional microtheater festival in upstate New York and/or the annual downtown Ithaca holiday pastorela in December. Full details for PMA 6010 - Latinx Theatre Production	Fall.
PMA 6021	Research Methods in PMA This class is designed to introduce doctoral students to Humanistic Research Methods. While qualitative and quantitative research methods are humanistic, this course serves as an added layer of context that integrates the rationales for why these methods aid us as researchers in thinking about structures, power, and identity. In this sense, the humanistic research methods explored in this class are designed to generate thinking about those topics as it relates to both ourselves as individuals and the societal communities we are a part of. Full details for PMA 6021 - Research Methods in PMA	Fall.
PMA 6445	German Media Theories This seminar examines German media theories from the Frankfurt School to the Kittler Network and beyond. We will discuss influential concepts associated with this work (e.g., the culture industry, the public sphere, discourse networks), along with related concepts in media and cultural studies (e.g., space and time, analog and digital, old and new media). Theoretical readings address questions about media aesthetics, intermediality, and media change; automation, mechanization, and standardization; and communication, command, and control. Engaging with scholarly debates about interdisciplinarity and theory transfer, we will also revisit and revise reductive stereotypes about media critique, technological determinism, and the "Germanness" of German media theories. Full details for PMA 6445 - German Media Theories
PMA 6461	Genres, Platforms, Media How do questions of genre persist and evolve in the age of digital media and A.I.? To what extent do we choose our genres, and in what ways do they choose us? How do genres, platforms, and media intersect and inform one another? What hierarchies do they establish, and to what purposes? Moving among a range of genres and sub-genres, poetry, fiction, film, and multimedia, websites and streaming services, this course will explore the accelerating interplay of genres, platforms, and media, and the increasingly pervasive role of A.I., in contemporary culture and politics. Full details for PMA 6461 - Genres, Platforms, Media	Fall.
PMA 6510	Documentary Production Fundamentals This introductory course familiarizes students with documentary filmmaking and audiovisual modes of knowledge production. Through lectures, screenings, workshops, and labs, students will develop single-camera digital video production and editing skills. Weekly camera, sound, and editing exercises will enhance students' documentary filmmaking techniques and their reflexive engagement with sensory scholarship. Additionally, students will be introduced to nonfiction film theory from the perspective of production and learn to critically engage and comment on each other's work. Discussions of debates around visual ethnography, the politics of representation, and filmmaking ethics will help students address practical storytelling dilemmas. Over the course of the semester, students conduct pre-production research and develop visual storytelling skills as they build a portfolio of short video assignments in preparation for continued training in documentary production. Full details for PMA 6510 - Documentary Production Fundamentals	Fall.
PMA 6550	Global Cinema I Global Cinema and Media offers a survey of international film and media history from the late nineteenth century to today. Through a focus on key films and significant epochs, the course traces the evolution of form, style and genre, the medium's changing technologies and business models, as well as film and media's relation to broader cultural, social and political contexts. Screenings of narrative, documentary and experimental films and video will be accompanied by readings in film and media theory and history. Full details for PMA 6550 - Global Cinema I	Fall.
PMA 6600	Proseminar in Performing and Media Arts An introduction to the theory and methods involved in the study of performing and media arts. Attention focuses on pedagogy and the profession in Part I. Part II explores current scholarly trends. Full details for PMA 6600 - Proseminar in Performing and Media Arts	Fall.
PMA 6695	Queer Archives and Archiving Queerness This course contemplates challenges associated with researching and representing LGBTQ+ pasts. We approach this topic from several angles: 1) by asking what constitutes "queer" and "trans" in different historical contexts and different geographical locations, when sexuality and gender are by their nature fluid; 2) by training in LGBTQ+ archival methods; and 3) by engagement with queer and trans artivists who make archives central to their praxis. We will visit Cornell's Human Sexuality collection, explore online repositories and academic databases (e.g., ONE and Cengage), and consider archive-based artistic projects (e.g., Killjoy's Castle and MOTHA). Full details for PMA 6695 - Queer Archives and Archiving Queerness	Fall.
PMA 6835	Performance Studies: Theories and Methods An understanding of performance as object and lens, modality and method, is integral to scholarship and research across the humanities and social sciences. Charting the advent and defining principles of performance studies, this course explores the interdisciplinary history of the field, including its association with anthropology, visual studies, theater, gender studies, sociology, psychology, literature, philosophy, and critical race studies. This class examines performance as a means of creative expression, a mode of critical inquiry, and an avenue for public engagement. We will attend to both the practice of performance - as gesture, behavior, habit, event, artistic expression, and social drama - and the study of performance - through ethnographic observation, spectatorship, documentation, reproduction, analysis, and writing strategies. Through a study of research paradigms and key issues related to performance, we will explore not only what this highly contested term "is" and "does," but when and how, for whom, and under what circumstances. Full details for PMA 6835 - Performance Studies: Theories and Methods	Fall.
PMA 7000	Independent Study for Graduate Students in Performing and Media Arts Independent study in performing and media arts allows graduate students the opportunity to pursue special interests not treated in regularly scheduled courses. A faculty member, who becomes the student's instructor for the course, must approve the student's program of study and agree to provide continuing supervision of the work. Full details for PMA 7000 - Independent Study for Graduate Students in Performing and Media Arts	Fall, Spring.
PMA 7100	The Pedagogy of Performing and Media Arts Provides graduate students in the field of Performing and Media Arts an opportunity to work directly with a faculty member to explore pedagogical theory and practice in undergraduate theatre classes in all areas of the curriculum. Full details for PMA 7100 - The Pedagogy of Performing and Media Arts	Fall, Spring.
PMA 9900	Thesis and Research Projects Graduate student course while working on thesis and research for dissertation. Full details for PMA 9900 - Thesis and Research Projects	Fall, Spring.

PMA 1125

FWS: The Undead...Live! Vampires on Stage Vampires.

Vampires are everywhere. This course hunts the dangerous and subversive figure of the vampire across a variety of pages, stages and screens. From raucous stage comedies, to lush cinematic epics and politically savvy television--and all the Draculas that have come and gone in between--we will explore how the vampire changes with medium, period, and genre. Students will be asked to consider why vampires emerge in particular historical and contemporary moments, and what cultural anxieties they articulate, as well as how the vampire is constructed, appropriated, and performed. By engaging with course texts, students will develop strategies for attentive reading and thoughtful writing. Assignments will vary in style and format, and will focus on critical thinking, preparation, clear prose, and papers structured around well-supported claims.

Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG)

Full details for PMA 1125 - FWS: The Undead...Live! Vampires on Stage Vampires.

Fall.

PMA 1168

FWS: Your Fave is Problematic: Media, Fandom, and Race

Do you enjoy watching video essays about your problematic faves on YouTube or TikTok and want to try your hand at making one of your own? Essays offering critical analysis of media objects and fandoms are an increasingly popular form of user-generated content and information dissemination. This Fisrt-Year Writing Seminar will give students a chance to dip their toes into discourse surrounding media and fandom as it relates to race. Students will write on the topic of race while engaging readings from the fields of Fandom, Performance, and Media Studies. The ultimate goal of this course is to provide students with tools to effectively communicate critical analysis using their favorite media objects and/or fandoms using clear, concise, accessible writing.

Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG)

Full details for PMA 1168 - FWS: Your Fave is Problematic: Media, Fandom, and Race

Fall.

PMA 1179

FWS: Witch Hunts, Welfare, and Warfare: A Cultural History of Reproductive Medicine

The repeal of Roe v. Wade marks a reproductive crisis in the US, but reproductive injustice has a long history. While the Pill and the IUD are crucial for reproductive choice, they have also been tools of reproductive control. This course offers a critical and cultural history of reproductive medicine and its relationship to patriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism. Students will learn about the birth of modern gynecology, the entanglements between progressive welfare and fascist warfare, and organized resistance against reproductive control. We will engage a variety of historical media and read texts from the history of race and gender in science, media studies, Marxism, and Black and Indigenous feminisms. Assignments invite students to write formal papers and produce their own creative multimedia work.

Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG)

Full details for PMA 1179 - FWS: Witch Hunts, Welfare, and Warfare: A Cultural History of Reproductive Medicine

Fall.

PMA 1180

FWS: Femininities: Race, Feminism, and Media

Is beauty, sexiness, Barbie, or the color pink feminine? What or who defines femininity? In our contemporary culture, such ideas are complicated by the performances of drag queens, sex workers, divas, and queer/trans artists of color. By exploring programs like the Real Housewives series, the film Hustlers, spoken word poetry, visual art, and related critical materials by such writers as bell hooks and Audre Lorde, this class will help you better understand the cultural politics of femininity in its relations to race and feminism. Gender expression and our responses to it are shaped by social and political forces that include race, migration, colonialism, and sexuality. Engaging such perspectives, we will write about our favorite divas, make zines, and analyze together films and other popular media forms.

Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG)

Full details for PMA 1180 - FWS: Femininities: Race, Feminism, and Media

Fall.

PMA 1181

FWS: Love and the Environment

How does love shape an environment? How do we perceive the space where love ends and the environment begins, or can we? How are relationships co-creating space? With what can we cultivate a greater intimacy? These are some of the questions we will explore creatively and rhetorically this semester. We will consider "love" from the theoretical framework of black feminist, queer, and indigenous thought to expand the concept from western romantic notions to explore intimacies of various formations—platonic, communal, familial, spiritual, natural--through the lens of ecopoetics. I use the term 'environment' to invoke scene/setting, natural/ecological perspectives, and interpersonal space. We will engage with varieties of text--poetry to performance art to film--and have 6 writing assignments, 5 essays and 1 experimental work, with opportunities for revision.

Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG)

Full details for PMA 1181 - FWS: Love and the Environment

Fall.

PMA 1182

FWS: Speaking Bodies, Dancing Knowledge in the Caribbean

This course examines the pasts, presents, and futures of dance in the Caribbean. From nightclub performances to sacred rituals, we will consider how factors such as discrimination, tourism, migration, and globalization have impacted various dance forms and the ways in which they are staged, practiced, or experienced today. We will watch documentary films, stage performances, and music videos that feature influential artists such as Katherine Dunham, Alicia Alonso, Celia Cruz, Ivy Queen, Romeo Santos, and Bad Bunny. We will also read critical dance studies articles to help us develop informed written reflections. Students will write five formal essays discussing different dance styles and issues related to migration, tourism, globalization, and race/gender/class relations in the Caribbean, and in preparation, submit topic proposals, drafts, and peer-review exercises.

Full details for PMA 1182 - FWS: Speaking Bodies, Dancing Knowledge in the Caribbean

Fall.

PMA 1410

Media Production Laboratory

The Media Production Lab course is a series of self-contained lecture/workshops on various topics in the production of film and video on-set and on-location. The workshops will be hands on experience with cameras, lighting and sound equipment, exploring the technique of cinematography as well as, lighting, sound, and grip techniques for the studio and in the field. We will cover specific areas such as dollies and rigging, location sound, and production protocol. Open to all skill levels.

Full details for PMA 1410 - Media Production Laboratory

Fall, Spring.

PMA 1610

Production Technology Laboratory

This technology lab will provide students with a foundation of the production process through experiential learning of scenographic practices. Students will learn about the technical production processes as they pertain too: scenery fabrication and installation, properties fabrication, costume fabrication, and lighting installation (primarily lighting for live performance).

Full details for PMA 1610 - Production Technology Laboratory

Fall, Spring.

PMA 1611

Rehearsal and Performance

Students participating in a PMA creative project led by a faculty member or PMA Guest Artist can earn PMA 1611 credit.

Full details for PMA 1611 - Rehearsal and Performance

Fall, Spring.

PMA 2100

Introduction to Performing and Media Arts

This course is designed to offer students a broad, foundational introduction to the mission of the Department of Performing and Media Arts. With a focus both on making artistic work in mediated forms and in live performance and on the critical methods for studying such artwork, we explore a variety of topics and concepts, from composition and gesture to sound and movement—and beyond. Joined by visiting guest experts from all across the PMA faculty, the instructors usher students through a range of approaches to creative authorship, design, embodied performance, history, and theory. Organized around a series of keywords, including adaptation, representation, transformation, and world-building, the course also foregrounds ways of thinking about and with categories of identity and social relations, such as ability, age, class, ethnicity, gender, race, and sexuality.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 2100 - Introduction to Performing and Media Arts

Fall.

PMA 2221

Contemporary Movement Practices

Contemporary Movement Practices is an intermediate-level studio immersion in contemporary concert dance genres and methodologies germane to the 21st-century field. In-depth modules will extract and explore most notably from Bartenieff Fundamentals℠ and Countertechnique®, as well as ripen the sensibility and capacity for current trends and approaches to dynamic floorwork, such as Flying-Low®. The objective is to cultivate and champion a dynamic anatomy and body consciousness built on learned perception, sensation, and organization. This is achieved through the experiential research and framing of Total Body Connectivity, which is based on the perennial work of Irmgard Bartenieff: Breath, Head/Tail, Core/Distal, Upper/Lower Body, Body Halves, and Diagonal.

Full details for PMA 2221 - Contemporary Movement Practices

Fall, Spring.

PMA 2280

Dance Improvisation

The training and practice of skills for the spontaneous collaborative composition of movement performance. Students hone their abilities to invent and respond to each other and their environment to produce dances that engage their audience. This course coaxes inspiration, seeking to make it reliable and to keep it surprising. It offers the possibility of "training" one's movement instincts to respond relevantly and with spontaneity.

Full details for PMA 2280 - Dance Improvisation

Fall.

PMA 2300

Dance Composition

Students compose and present short studies that are discussed and reworked. Problems are defined and explored through class improvisations. Informal showing at end of semester. Includes informal showing of work. Weekly assignments in basic elements of choreography.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 2300 - Dance Composition

Fall, Spring.

PMA 2403

Africa in Hollywood

In Eddie Murphy's Coming to America, Africa is a place of nobility, where even lions are at peace with lambs. In contrast, Leonardo DeCaprio's Blood Diamond is a violent look at the role the demand for diamonds has played in destabilizing mineral-rich African countries. But if Hollywood has long been concerned with depicting Africa in particular ways, African filmmakers are at the same time creating their own stories. Popular and scholarly film critics are also contributing to the battle over who speaks for Africa. In this course we will explore these competing images of Africa, questions of imagination versus reality, and the extent to which artists should, if at all, be responsible to the subject of their art.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, GLC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 2403 - Africa in Hollywood

Fall or Spring.

PMA 2404

Story Ideation, Creation, and Development

This course centers on story creation, development and presentation. Students learn what makes a great story for the screen and how to take it from concept to pitch. Over the course of the semester through writing assignments and discussion, students practice creating, developing, analyzing, and pitching original stories for film and television.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 2404 - Story Ideation, Creation, and Development

Fall.

PMA 2435

New Visions in African Cinema

This undergraduate course introduces the formal and topical innovations that African cinema has experienced since its inception in the 1960s. Sections will explore, among others, Nollywood, sci-fi, and ideological cinema. Films include: Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako, Mohamed Camara's Dakan, Djibril Diop Mambéty's Touki-Bouki, Cheikh Oumar Sissoko's Finzan, Anne-Laure Folly's Women with Open Eyes, Ousmane Sembène's Camp de Thiaroye, Jean-Pierre Bekolo's Quartier Mozart.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, GLC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 2435 - New Visions in African Cinema

Fall.

PMA 2560

American Cinema

From the beginning of the twentieth century to the present moment, movies - and in particular Hollywood - have profoundly influenced the ways in which people see, think and talk about the world. Focusing mostly on Hollywood film, this course introduces the study of American cinema from multiple perspectives: as an economy and mode of production; as an art form that produces particular aesthetic styles; as a cultural institution that comments on contemporary issues and allows people to socialize. We will consider the rise of Hollywood in the age of mass production; the star system; the introduction of sound and the function of the soundtrack; Hollywood's rivalry with television; censorship; the rise of independent film, etc. Weekly screenings introduce major American genres (e.g. science fiction, film noir, the musical) and directors (e.g. Hitchcock, Kubrick, Tarantino).

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 2560 - American Cinema

Fall or Spring.

PMA 2610

Production Crew Laboratory

Learn what it means to run a live show. Participate as part of a team to ensure all the elements work together and on time. Learn the intricacies of collaborating with a production group to create a unified artistic vision. Program lighting, sound, or video boards, or participate as a dresser, stage crew member, or assistant stage manager.

Full details for PMA 2610 - Production Crew Laboratory

Fall, Spring.

PMA 2611

Stage Management Laboratory

This lab will give students practical experience as an assistant stage manager in the organization and management of a theatrical or mediated production; in rehearsals, in technical rehearsals as the scenographic elements are implemented, and in performance or filming for a fully supported department production under the supervision of the staff stage manager. The course can only be applied to a fully supported department production with a full rehearsal period and performance.

Full details for PMA 2611 - Stage Management Laboratory

Fall, Spring.

PMA 2670

Shakespeare

This course aims to give students a good historical and critical grounding in Shakespeare's drama and its central and continuing place in Renaissance culture and beyond. We will read poetry and primarily plays representing the shape of Shakespeare's career as it moves through comedies, histories, tragedies, and a romance. Specific plays include The Two Gentleman of Verona, Richard II, Henry IV (Part 1), Henry V, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Othello, Macbeth and The Tempest. We will focus on dramatic forms (genres), Shakespeare's themes, and social and historical contexts. The course combines lectures and hands-on work in weekly discussions. While we will view some scenes from film adaptations, the main focus is on careful close interaction with the language of the plays. This class counts toward the pre-1800 requirement for English majors.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 2670 - Shakespeare

Fall.

PMA 2701

Media Arts, Performance, and Sound: Intersections

This interdisciplinary course offers an introduction to the methods employed in media arts, sound and performance. It provides a comprehensive exploration of the strategies and historical context of these disciplines. Students will engage in an interdisciplinary studio setting with a specific focus on one of these areas. Through hands-on experience, they will delve into contemporary artistic practices, honing their technical skills to develop and realize their creative projects. Potential topics covered include video and animation, digital image production, sound art, performance art, and movement

Full details for PMA 2701 - Media Arts, Performance, and Sound: Intersections

Fall, Spring.

PMA 2800

Introduction to Acting

An introduction to the actor's technique and performance skills, exploring the elements necessary to begin training as an actor, i.e., observation, concentration, and imagination. Focus is on physical and vocal exercises, improvisation, and text and character. There is required play reading, play attendance, and some scene study.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, ETM-AS) (CA-AG, KCM-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 2800 - Introduction to Acting

Fall, Spring.

PMA 3000

Independent Study

Independent study allows students the opportunity to pursue special interests not treated in regularly scheduled courses. A faculty member, who becomes the student's instructor for the course, must approve the student's program of study and agree to provide continuing supervision of the work.

Full details for PMA 3000 - Independent Study

Fall, Spring.

PMA 3010

Latinx Theatre Production

In this course, we will develop a toolbox of performance techniques based on methods developed in the Spanish-speaking and Latinx contexts. These techniques will be used in preparing short, original, collectively-created or scripted plays for production and public presentation in the October 2024 regional microtheater festival in upstate New York and/or the annual downtown Ithaca holiday pastorela in December.

Full details for PMA 3010 - Latinx Theatre Production

Fall.

PMA 3226

Global Dance and Decolonizing Movement

How does the social production of dance reflect its historical context? Is dance inherently political? What is the meaning of the "beautiful" in dance? Beginning with 16th century court dances, we will explore how aesthetics have been aligned both with and against politics in various periods, across borders, and genres of the performing body, looking at dance as insider's diplomacy and outsider's rebellion. Is modern dance a democratization of the art form? Is postmodern dance a discourse of traditions? This course is designed to promote a critical appreciation of dance, its values and its ambitions, by developing a historical and cultural understanding.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, GLC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3226 - Global Dance and Decolonizing Movement

Fall.

PMA 3241

Site-Specific to Immersive Dance Theater: Choreography for Unconventional Formats and Spaces

Site-Specific to Immersive Dance Theater: Choreographing for Unconventional Formats and Spaces is a research-to-practice course reconsidering the function, philosophy, and reality of an evolving stage. What is the practice and purpose of performance beyond the traditional proscenium? How does the meaning of choreography operate and expand as its format alters and transforms? How does the performer properly exercise and prepare themselves to address their work in new and different surroundings? Audiences? Students will confront and respond to the psychological, political, historical, and communal orientation and potential of dance in non-traditional spaces. Using exercises based on reactive versus relational movement, students will distinguish between the making of site-sympathetic, site-specific, site-adaptable, environmental, installation, interactive, interventional, and immersive modes of dance performance, production, and world-making

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3241 - Site-Specific to Immersive Dance Theater: Choreography for Unconventional Formats and Spaces

Fall.

PMA 3463

Contemporary Television

This course considers issues, approaches, and complexities in the contemporary television landscape. As television has changed drastically over the past fifteen years, this course provides students with a deeper understanding of the changes in narratives, technologies, forms, and platforms that structure/restructure the televisual world. Students will grapple with how "new media" forms such as web-series and on-demand internet streaming services have changed primetime television. We will balance our look at television shows with nuanced readings about the televisual media industry. By watching, analyzing, and critiquing the powerful medium of television, students will situate their understanding within a broader consideration of the medium's regulation, production, distribution, and reception in the network and post-network era.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3463 - Contemporary Television

Fall.

PMA 3464

Representational Ethics in Film and Television

This course is designed to explore the varied ways that race and gender intersect with the media industry. While common industrial logic suggests these descriptors of identity are not a factor in terms of its business models and assumptions, the reality is much more complex. Race, as well as gender, class, and sexuality, play large parts in how media industries function and in informing and shaping audience expectations and assumptions. Thus, the time spent in class will largely consist of deconstructing several media industries, including film, television, and new media to show just how race, as well as other modes of identity such as gender, sexuality, and class, operate within it.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3464 - Representational Ethics in Film and Television

Fall.

PMA 3510

Documentary Production Fundamentals

This introductory course familiarizes students with documentary filmmaking and audiovisual modes of knowledge production. Through lectures, screenings, workshops, and labs, students will develop single-camera digital video production and editing skills. Weekly camera, sound, and editing exercises will enhance students' documentary filmmaking techniques and their reflexive engagement with sensory scholarship. Additionally, students will be introduced to nonfiction film theory from the perspective of production and learn to critically engage and comment on each other's work. Discussions of debates around visual ethnography, the politics of representation, and filmmaking ethics will help students address practical storytelling dilemmas. Over the course of the semester, students conduct pre-production research and develop visual storytelling skills as they build a portfolio of short video assignments in preparation for continued training in documentary production.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3510 - Documentary Production Fundamentals

Fall.

PMA 3515

Video and New Media: Art, Theory, Politics

The course will offer an overview of video art, alternative documentary video, and digital installation and networked art. It will analyze four phases of video and new media: (1) the development of video from its earliest turn away from television; (2) video's relation to art and installation; (3) video's migration into digital art; (4) the relation of video and new media to visual theory and social movements. Screenings will include early political and feminist video (Ant Farm, Rosler, Paper Tiger TV, Jones), conceptual video of the '80s and '90s (Vasulka, Lucier, Viola, Hill), gay and multicultural video of the '90s (Muntadas, Riggs, Piper, Fung, Parmar), networked and activist new media of the 21st century (Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Disturbance Theater, SubRosa, Preemptive Media). Secondary theoretical readings on postmodernism, video theory, multicultural theory, and digital culture will provide students with a cultural and political context for the discussion of video and new media style, dissemination, and reception.

Full details for PMA 3515 - Video and New Media: Art, Theory, Politics

Fall.

PMA 3535

TV Writing: Hour Long

This is a one-semester workshop focusing on the foundational basics of writing for television, with an emphasis on the structure and process of creating a hour long script. Students will individually pitch and break an original episode, and develop an outline, first draft script and rewrite for an existing and currently running hour long television series. Additionally, all participants will work as a "writers' room" to give feedback and pitches on other students' projects. Students will have their work-in-progress read, analyzed, and discussed by all participants.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3535 - TV Writing: Hour Long

Fall.

PMA 3550

Global Cinema and Media

Global Cinema and Media offers a survey of international film and media history from the late nineteenth century to today. Through a focus on key films and significant epochs, the course traces the evolution of form, style and genre, the medium's changing technologies and business models, as well as film and media's relation to broader cultural, social and political contexts. Screenings of narrative, documentary and experimental films and video will be accompanied by readings in film and media theory and history.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, GLC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3550 - Global Cinema and Media

Fall.

PMA 3555

Comics as a Medium

What are comics? While it's easy to identify a cartoon, graphic novel, or comic book, it's hard to understand the wide world of comics. As a medium, comics are part of a global tradition of visual storytelling and sequential art, including premodern tapestries, early modern pamphlets, and modern children's books, political cartoons, and animated films. With a focus on the German-speaking world, we will examine a wide range of comics genres (e.g., fiction, history, autobiography, journalism, comix) and formats (e.g., books, strips, pamphlets, zines). Our discussions will address questions of taste, aesthetics, materiality, censorship, representation, and word-image relations. While we will primarily be reading and writing about comics and comics studies, students will also gain some exposure to making comics.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3555 - Comics as a Medium

Fall.

PMA 3570

Film and Video Production I

An introduction to filmmaking, students will learn to create compelling characters, as well as develop strong storytelling skills through basic character and story development and breakdown, cinematography, lighting, sound and editing. Over the course of the semester, students will deconstruct and analyze visual culture in an effort to learn effective techniques in visual storytelling. Students will write, shoot and edit a series of dramatic narrative exercises, participating in the preproduction to post production processes. Students will collaborate and rotate through various roles. The course will culminate with the screening of the various course projects, in a public, open-campus event at the end of the semester.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3570 - Film and Video Production I

Fall, Spring.

PMA 3571

Documentary Filmmaking

Documentary Filmmaking will equip. students with the knowledge to produce quality short, socially and culturally conscious, documentaries that express an interesting story. This course covers the aesthetic and technical fundamentals of directing and producing documentaries. It provides working tools to plan and tell your stories creatively, collaboratively, artistically and professionally. The goal is to produce quality productions designed as a stepping stone to more advanced projects. In the process, we will deeply discuss the principles, history, and ethics of documentary filmmaking.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3571 - Documentary Filmmaking

Fall.

PMA 3580

Cinematography and Visual Storytelling

Film is a language that expresses the director's idea and cinematography is a key component of the language of film. You need to develop visual storytelling skills by blending lights, camera movements, frame composition, and color palette to use this film language to convey your idea. In this class we will learn the concept of visual strategies in filmmaking and cameras and lighting and research the various aspects of film cinematography.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3580 - Cinematography and Visual Storytelling

Fall.

PMA 3610

Creative Apprenticeship

Based on previous coursework and experience, students may be offered the opportunity to participate as an apprentice in a mentored PMA creative project. The apprentice experience and number of credits will be defined by the needs of the project, the area of study, and the mentor. Apprentice roles may include Assistant Director, Assistant Designer, Assistant Choreographer, Dramaturg, or others, as determined by the mentor. Successful completion of this course is necessary for application to the AUPR program.

Full details for PMA 3610 - Creative Apprenticeship

Fall, Spring.

PMA 3614

Creative Character Design

A course working on the creation and development of characters on paper. The character designs explored will not be bound by the limits of the human body or physical costumes, but rather will push the limits of character imagery to that which could ultimately be achieved in print illustration, sequential art, traditional animation, digital special effects and animation, video gaming, various forms of puppetry and animatronic forms, depending on the student's area of interest. (Students will not engage in animation, or three-dimensional crafting of characters, but rather will develop the design content that could then be applied to these forms).

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3614 - Creative Character Design

Fall.

PMA 3630

Scenic and Lighting Design for Performance Studio I

The Scenic and Lighting designers are responsible for creating 'the visual world' of the play. From sketches to models, from groundplans to light plots, this intro-level hands-on, project-based course introduces students to the scenic and lighting design processes through text analysis, visual research, beginning drafting practices, model building, light laboratories and beyond. Intended to provide a foundation in scenic and lighting design practices, the teachings of this course will have future applications in all performance disciplines including Theatre, Dance, Film, and Television.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3630 - Scenic and Lighting Design for Performance Studio I

Fall.

PMA 3633

Out of Body Performance: Puppets and Animation

From the ancient Javanese traditions of Wayang to the Muppets; from Emile Cohl to Pixar: Puppeteers and Animators are performer designers. In this course students will explore and discover the global canvas and world history of puppetry, animation, and their respective intersections through a combination of lectures, practice and research culminating in a final narrative project.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3633 - Out of Body Performance: Puppets and Animation

Fall.

PMA 3661

Costume Design Studio II

This course will explore unconventional costume designs for theatre, dance, and mediated performance. It will deal with the special considerations found in some plays and performance pieces, such as the theatricalization of non-human subjects (animals, plants, elements, magical creatures, etc.), the visualization of music, or the support or enhancement of movement. It will cover alternative ways to create character through costume, make-up, masks, and wearable forms of puppetry. Students will be responsible for script reading, character analysis, written "concepts", visual research, and rendering of design sketches for three projects, as well as other exercises.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3661 - Costume Design Studio II

Fall.

PMA 3680

Sound Design

Covering the basics of digital audio, bioacoustics, psychoacoustics and sound design, as they apply to theatre, film and music production. Students create soundscapes for text and moving image using ProTools software.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3680 - Sound Design

Fall, Spring.

PMA 3711

Sitcom Jews: Ethnic Representation on Television, 1948-Present

Jews have been on TV since the beginning of the medium – over 70 years – and have made decisions about how they are represented. What kind of Jews do we put on screen, and do they actually represent Jews in America? What about the representation of other ethnic and cultural groups? What can we learn from the history of Jewish television that might apply to Black, Latinx, Muslim, LGBTQ, Asian and other communities as they present themselves to the American public? "Sitcom Jews" uses media analysis, theoretical discussion, and student writing to examine a huge range of TV, starting with classic sitcoms ("The Goldbergs" (1948), "All in the Family, and "Bridget Loves Bernie"), continuing through current Jewish TV shows ("Broad City", "Transparent", "Curb Your Enthusiasm"), and adding a range of ethnic television ("The Jeffersons", "Black-ish", "Insecure", "Ramy", "Will & Grace", "Never Have I Ever").

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3711 - Sitcom Jews: Ethnic Representation on Television, 1948-Present

Fall.

PMA 3740

Parody

In A Theory of Parody, Linda Hutcheon defines parody broadly as "repetition with critical difference, which marks difference rather than similarity." Taking a cue from Hutcheon, we will consider parody as a form of meaning making that is not necessarily used in the service of ridicule. Rather, we will examine a number of late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century imitative works in order to distinguish the rich variety of political agendas and aesthetic rationales for recent parody. An emphasis on postmodern or contemporary performances and media that renovate images, ideas, and icons from modernism and modernity will unite our otherwise diverse efforts. Some of these efforts will also highlight what happens when an artist takes up a work made for one platform (for example, theatre, performance art, installation, cinema, television, the Web) and parodies it in another. Creators and works under consideration may range from Christopher Durang, Split Britches, and Pig Iron Theatre Company to The Simpsons, Cookie's Fortune, and Strindberg and Helium.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3740 - Parody

Fall.

PMA 3750

Global Theatre and Performance

This course is designed to introduce students to a range of historical, cross-cultural, and transnational performance texts, theories, and practices; to motivate students to examine the broad social, political, cultural, and economic contexts in which performances take place; and to familiarize students with major methodologies and paradigms for the creation, spectatorship, and interpretation of performances.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, GLC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3750 - Global Theatre and Performance

Fall.

PMA 3757

American Drama and Theatre

Explores major American playwrights from 1900 to 1960, introducing students to American theatre as a significant part of modern American cultural history. We will consider the ways in which theatre has contributed to the construction and deconstruction of a national identity. Similarly, we will examine the influence of the American Theatre on and in film. We will pay special attention to the social, political, and aesthetic contexts of the time period and discuss the shifting popularity of dramatic forms, including melodrama, realism, expressionism, absurdism, and the folk play, in the American theatre canon. Authors include O'Neill, Glaspell, Odets, Rice, Hellman, Hughes, Miller, Williams, and Albee, among others.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3757 - American Drama and Theatre

Fall.

PMA 3800

Acting II

Practical exploration of the actor's craft through exercises in physical and psychological action, improvisation and scene study.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3800 - Acting II

Fall, Spring.

PMA 3804

Black Sound and Visual Culture

In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will study the strategies that sound artists, composers, visual artists, writers, and filmmakers have employed to use Black sounds as a sign. We will explore intersections between sound and image throughout the African diaspora. Intersections in question include the place of sound art within different Black musical and visual traditions, Black music as a resource for painting and sculpture, the visual design of Black music projects, the Black soundscape and the built environment, acoustic ecology and mapping in Black communities, and African diasporic filmmaking as a sonic art form.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3804 - Black Sound and Visual Culture

Fall.

PMA 3841

Immersive Performance: Investigating the Experiential

The course traces the history and innovation of the Immersive Theatre Movement. These 21st century projects eliminate "the stage" as the primary location for performance to prioritize more experiential interactive audience engagements- with live-ness and active participation as fundamental goals. Working as collaborative think tank, students will engage, explore and specify examples set by artists such as Kara Walker, RA Walden, Coco Fusco and Marina Abramovics and Tania El Khoury evoking and expanding the definitions of experiential. They will examine the work of companies such as PIEHOLE, PUNCHDRUNK (SLEEP NO MORE), THIRD RAIL PROJECTS (THEN SHE FELL) and EN GARDE ARTS, SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE companies seeking to re-create the relationship between performer and spectator focusing on sensory engagement, visceral engagement and accessible spectacle a variety of approach to stimulate and reawaken performativity - expanding theatre towards multimedia applications, AR/VR and also solo interactive and site specific processes intended to surprise startle and instigate.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3841 - Immersive Performance: Investigating the Experiential

Fall.

PMA 3880

Fundamentals of Directing I

Focused, practical exercises teach the student fundamental staging techniques that bring written text to theatrical life. A core objective is to increase the student's awareness of why and how certain stage events communicate effectively to an audience. Each student directs a number of exercises as well as a short scene.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 3880 - Fundamentals of Directing I

Fall.

PMA 4000

Senior Studio

In this advanced undergraduate-level seminar, all senior majors synthesize four years of study in a collaborative intellectual and artistic project with the faculty. Over the course of the fall semester, students conceive and produce work for presentation to the public in the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. Students also generate a supporting scholarly matrix for that work, and their collective genesis of material integrates the major's four rubrics (history, theory, and criticism; creative authorship; design; and embodied performance). As a crucible for artistic and intellectual collaboration, the senior studio may emphasize an area of study, a period, a text, or a theme. The studio's organizing emphasis will be specific to ongoing, pressing inquiries in the disciplines of performing and media arts.

Full details for PMA 4000 - Senior Studio

Fall.

PMA 4461

Genres, Platforms, Media

How do questions of genre persist and evolve in the age of digital media and A.I.? To what extent do we choose our genres, and in what ways do they choose us? How do genres, platforms, and media intersect and inform one another? What hierarchies do they establish, and to what purposes? Moving among a range of genres and sub-genres, poetry, fiction, film, and multimedia, websites and streaming services, this course will explore the accelerating interplay of genres, platforms, and media, and the increasingly pervasive role of A.I., in contemporary culture and politics.

Catalog Distribution: (GLC-AS) (CA-AG)

Full details for PMA 4461 - Genres, Platforms, Media

Fall.

PMA 4670

Shakespeare's Hamlet: The Seminar

The most studied and written about work in Western Literature outside the Bible, Hamlet according to Harold Bloom, is our secular savior and our ambassador to death. This course centers on a close reading of the play. Through research and assigned readings the course tests theoretical viewpoints about the play against the text itself by reading the theory in relationship to the production history.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 4670 - Shakespeare's Hamlet: The Seminar

Fall.

PMA 4671

Funny Business: Stand Up Comedy and Its Social, Political, and Cultural Importance

This course will explore the cultural, political and social ramifications of stand-up comedy through the lens of twentieth and twenty-first century stand up comedians. Because of streaming services, Stand Up is more accessible than ever to a wider audience. Too, streamed video is not subject to the censorship rules of broadcast television so the wider array of subject matter and the way that subject can be presented is direct and fearless, making comics not just entertainers, but cultural influencers in a much broader way that earlier cultural critics, such as Lenny Bruce and Moms Mabley could only imagine. This newfound influence makes Stand Up comedians and their comedy ripe for study, not only within a cultural context but also as a part of free-speech arguments.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 4671 - Funny Business: Stand Up Comedy and Its Social, Political, and Cultural Importance

Fall.

PMA 4695

Queer Archives and Archiving Queerness

This course contemplates challenges associated with researching and representing LGBTQ+ pasts. We approach this topic from several angles: 1) by asking what constitutes "queer" and "trans" in different historical contexts and different geographical locations, when sexuality and gender are by their nature fluid; 2) by training in LGBTQ+ archival methods; and 3) by engagement with queer and trans artivists who make archives central to their praxis. We will visit Cornell's Human Sexuality collection, explore online repositories and academic databases (e.g., ONE and Cengage), and consider archive-based artistic projects (e.g., Killjoy's Castle and MOTHA).

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 4695 - Queer Archives and Archiving Queerness

Fall.

PMA 4801

Advanced Studies in Acting Techniques

Advanced acting students will expand their skills using targeted approaches and methodologies of the instructors' choosing to develop scripted and/or original material for in-class study and presentation.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 4801 - Advanced Studies in Acting Techniques

Fall.

PMA 4835

Performance Studies: Theories and Methods

An understanding of performance as object and lens, modality and method, is integral to scholarship and research across the humanities and social sciences. Charting the advent and defining principles of performance studies, this course explores the interdisciplinary history of the field, including its association with anthropology, visual studies, theater, gender studies, sociology, psychology, literature, philosophy, and critical race studies. This class examines performance as a means of creative expression, a mode of critical inquiry, and an avenue for public engagement. We will attend to both the practice of performance - as gesture, behavior, habit, event, artistic expression, and social drama - and the study of performance - through ethnographic observation, spectatorship, documentation, reproduction, analysis, and writing strategies. Through a study of research paradigms and key issues related to performance, we will explore not only what this highly contested term "is" and "does," but when and how, for whom, and under what circumstances.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for PMA 4835 - Performance Studies: Theories and Methods

Fall.

PMA 4950

Honors Research Tutorial I

First of a two-semester sequence (the second is PMA 4951) for seniors engaged in an honors project. Honor guidelines and form.

Full details for PMA 4950 - Honors Research Tutorial I

Fall, Spring.

PMA 4951

Honors Research Tutorial II

Second of a two-semester sequence (the first is PMA 4950) for students engaged in an honors project.

Full details for PMA 4951 - Honors Research Tutorial II

Fall, Spring.

PMA 4952

Undergraduate Internship

Academic credit can only be awarded for unpaid internships. Students must submit an Application for Academic Credit by April 15. The Application for Academic Credit must be received/approved prior to the start of the internship. If the internship opportunity is deemed eligible for academic credit, the student pursues the internship during the summer months and enrolls in this course the fall semester immediately following the summer internship. A written evaluation of the internship experience is required. Find complete information and application forms on the department website.

Full details for PMA 4952 - Undergraduate Internship

Fall.

PMA 5804

Black Sound and Visual Culture

In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will study the strategies that sound artists, composers, visual artists, writers, and filmmakers have employed to use Black sounds as a sign. We will explore intersections between sound and image throughout the African diaspora. Intersections in question include the place of sound art within different Black musical and visual traditions, Black music as a resource for painting and sculpture, the visual design of Black music projects, the Black soundscape and the built environment, acoustic ecology and mapping in Black communities, and African diasporic filmmaking as a sonic art form.

Full details for PMA 5804 - Black Sound and Visual Culture

Fall.

PMA 6010

Latinx Theatre Production

In this course, we will develop a toolbox of performance techniques based on methods developed in the Spanish-speaking and Latinx contexts. These techniques will be used in preparing short, original, collectively-created or scripted plays for production and public presentation in the October 2024 regional microtheater festival in upstate New York and/or the annual downtown Ithaca holiday pastorela in December.

Full details for PMA 6010 - Latinx Theatre Production

Fall.

PMA 6021

Research Methods in PMA

This class is designed to introduce doctoral students to Humanistic Research Methods. While qualitative and quantitative research methods are humanistic, this course serves as an added layer of context that integrates the rationales for why these methods aid us as researchers in thinking about structures, power, and identity. In this sense, the humanistic research methods explored in this class are designed to generate thinking about those topics as it relates to both ourselves as individuals and the societal communities we are a part of.

Full details for PMA 6021 - Research Methods in PMA

Fall.

PMA 6445

German Media Theories

This seminar examines German media theories from the Frankfurt School to the Kittler Network and beyond. We will discuss influential concepts associated with this work (e.g., the culture industry, the public sphere, discourse networks), along with related concepts in media and cultural studies (e.g., space and time, analog and digital, old and new media). Theoretical readings address questions about media aesthetics, intermediality, and media change; automation, mechanization, and standardization; and communication, command, and control. Engaging with scholarly debates about interdisciplinarity and theory transfer, we will also revisit and revise reductive stereotypes about media critique, technological determinism, and the "Germanness" of German media theories.

Full details for PMA 6445 - German Media Theories

PMA 6461

Genres, Platforms, Media

How do questions of genre persist and evolve in the age of digital media and A.I.? To what extent do we choose our genres, and in what ways do they choose us? How do genres, platforms, and media intersect and inform one another? What hierarchies do they establish, and to what purposes? Moving among a range of genres and sub-genres, poetry, fiction, film, and multimedia, websites and streaming services, this course will explore the accelerating interplay of genres, platforms, and media, and the increasingly pervasive role of A.I., in contemporary culture and politics.

Full details for PMA 6461 - Genres, Platforms, Media

Fall.

PMA 6510

Documentary Production Fundamentals

This introductory course familiarizes students with documentary filmmaking and audiovisual modes of knowledge production. Through lectures, screenings, workshops, and labs, students will develop single-camera digital video production and editing skills. Weekly camera, sound, and editing exercises will enhance students' documentary filmmaking techniques and their reflexive engagement with sensory scholarship. Additionally, students will be introduced to nonfiction film theory from the perspective of production and learn to critically engage and comment on each other's work. Discussions of debates around visual ethnography, the politics of representation, and filmmaking ethics will help students address practical storytelling dilemmas. Over the course of the semester, students conduct pre-production research and develop visual storytelling skills as they build a portfolio of short video assignments in preparation for continued training in documentary production.

Full details for PMA 6510 - Documentary Production Fundamentals

Fall.

PMA 6550

Global Cinema I

Global Cinema and Media offers a survey of international film and media history from the late nineteenth century to today. Through a focus on key films and significant epochs, the course traces the evolution of form, style and genre, the medium's changing technologies and business models, as well as film and media's relation to broader cultural, social and political contexts. Screenings of narrative, documentary and experimental films and video will be accompanied by readings in film and media theory and history.

Full details for PMA 6550 - Global Cinema I

Fall.

PMA 6600

Proseminar in Performing and Media Arts

An introduction to the theory and methods involved in the study of performing and media arts. Attention focuses on pedagogy and the profession in Part I. Part II explores current scholarly trends.

Full details for PMA 6600 - Proseminar in Performing and Media Arts

Fall.

PMA 6695

Queer Archives and Archiving Queerness

This course contemplates challenges associated with researching and representing LGBTQ+ pasts. We approach this topic from several angles: 1) by asking what constitutes "queer" and "trans" in different historical contexts and different geographical locations, when sexuality and gender are by their nature fluid; 2) by training in LGBTQ+ archival methods; and 3) by engagement with queer and trans artivists who make archives central to their praxis. We will visit Cornell's Human Sexuality collection, explore online repositories and academic databases (e.g., ONE and Cengage), and consider archive-based artistic projects (e.g., Killjoy's Castle and MOTHA).

Full details for PMA 6695 - Queer Archives and Archiving Queerness

Fall.

PMA 6835

Performance Studies: Theories and Methods

An understanding of performance as object and lens, modality and method, is integral to scholarship and research across the humanities and social sciences. Charting the advent and defining principles of performance studies, this course explores the interdisciplinary history of the field, including its association with anthropology, visual studies, theater, gender studies, sociology, psychology, literature, philosophy, and critical race studies. This class examines performance as a means of creative expression, a mode of critical inquiry, and an avenue for public engagement. We will attend to both the practice of performance - as gesture, behavior, habit, event, artistic expression, and social drama - and the study of performance - through ethnographic observation, spectatorship, documentation, reproduction, analysis, and writing strategies. Through a study of research paradigms and key issues related to performance, we will explore not only what this highly contested term "is" and "does," but when and how, for whom, and under what circumstances.

Full details for PMA 6835 - Performance Studies: Theories and Methods

Fall.

PMA 7000

Independent Study for Graduate Students in Performing and Media Arts

Independent study in performing and media arts allows graduate students the opportunity to pursue special interests not treated in regularly scheduled courses. A faculty member, who becomes the student's instructor for the course, must approve the student's program of study and agree to provide continuing supervision of the work.

Full details for PMA 7000 - Independent Study for Graduate Students in Performing and Media Arts

Fall, Spring.

PMA 7100

The Pedagogy of Performing and Media Arts

Provides graduate students in the field of Performing and Media Arts an opportunity to work directly with a faculty member to explore pedagogical theory and practice in undergraduate theatre classes in all areas of the curriculum.

Full details for PMA 7100 - The Pedagogy of Performing and Media Arts

Fall, Spring.

PMA 9900

Thesis and Research Projects

Graduate student course while working on thesis and research for dissertation.

Full details for PMA 9900 - Thesis and Research Projects

Fall, Spring.

Courses by semester

Courses for Fall 2024