Courses

Why are two identical people unsettling? "Uncanny" resemblances suggest the strangely familiar, and this course investigates the doppelgänger myth influencing superstitions about un- or supernatural twins with a diverse selection of materials from the Greeks through the Gothic into contemporary horror/sci-fi. Writers like Robert Louis Stevenson form the legacy of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, later generating Battlestar Galactica, Black Mirror, and Orphan Black. Exploring representations of duplication, this class's focus on queer theory emphasizes matters of sexuality and gender identity. While considering the ways doubles work across literary, cinematic, and televisual styles from Edgar Allan Poe to Joss Whedon, the course highlights in-class discussion, peer editing, and enhancing each student's ability to produce coherent, concise, persuasive prose in the form of critical arguments.

Full details for PMA 1132 - FWS: Boyfriendtwin: Queer Uncanny Doppelgangers

What can TV's "special" categories—such as special episodes and television specials—tell us about how television generally works? In this seminar, we will look at various episodes ranging from Christmas, Halloween, and musical episodes of series to so-called "very special episodes" focusing on uncharacteristically "heavy" social issues, as well as the genre of the stand-up special. We will think about questions of genre and structure in both our television objects and our writing. We will delve into the methodology of audio-visual analysis, and the writing assignments over the semester will allow students to practice and develop their critical skills via short responses, longer essays, and (optional) creative assignments.

Full details for PMA 1142 - FWS: A Very Special Television Seminar

How does a film come to have its distinct appearance, and why does it matter? The study of aesthetics situates the choices of individual filmmakers—from the color of set pieces to the selection of a scene's musical score—within a number of political, social, and artistic traditions. In this course, we will interrogate those traditions and place our contemporary media moment within a larger cultural history. Over the course of the semester, students will develop a formal vocabulary of film aesthetics and apply it to their writing assignments, including film reviews, scenic analysis, and larger research projects. Screenings may include Tangerine, Lemonade, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Her, In the Mood for Love, and more.

Full details for PMA 1143 - FWS: Contemporary Film Aesthetics

In our current political climate, where is the line drawn between politics and performance? How has performance historically been used to advance political propaganda? In what ways does performance facilitate real social change? From the suffragettes, to the oppression, immigrant worker's rights, to our current culture of political divisiveness theater is used to play on people's prejudices, emotions, and sense of justice. Using historical texts, articles, plays, and online news journals, students will explore a broad range of political theater while examining how performance shapes American culture and identities. The writing in this course is a mix of short essays, creative writing, and a research paper. Each assignment builds off the next, offering students lessons in summary, analyses, research, and finding their own voice.

Full details for PMA 1144 - FWS: Propaganda, Protests, and Performance

"We're all born naked and the rest is drag" - RuPaul. This course explores drag as a mode of queer cultural performance. Through a wide range of readings and viewings that introduce a diverse array of drag traditions and aesthetics, we will search for an understanding, even a simple definition, of drag. In so doing, we will explore drag performance as a queer cultural practice, a means of community formation, a potential disruption of gender norms and binaries, and as a radical act of liberation. By engaging in class discussion, practicing a variety of analytic writing styles, and establishing an essay drafting and revising process, students will develop and hone their college writing skills all while investigating drag performance and being absolutely fabulous.

Full details for PMA 1145 - FWS: Socks, Pads, and Other Stuff(ing): Drag Performance

Full details for PMA 1146 - FWS: The Public Voice: Rhetoric of Speechwriting

Entry-level class. Covers the fundamentals of elementary dance training. Movement sequences focusing on rhythm, placement, and vitality of performance through an anatomically sound dance technique.

Full details for PMA 1200 - Dance Technique I

The Media Production Lab course is a series of self-contained lecture/workshops on various topics in the production of film and video. The workshops will be a mix of lecture and hands on experience with cameras, lighting and sound equipment. We will cover specific areas such as dollies and rigging, location sound and post production. Open to all skill levels.

Full details for PMA 1410 - Media Production Laboratory

Learn what it takes to prepare a live show. Students work on getting scenery, costumes, and lighting ready for performance or for production. Gain the practical skills and learn to use the tools that are integral to the presentation of live art.

Full details for PMA 1610 - Production Laboratory

Perform in a departmental theatre production or dance concert. Research a role, develop a character, and perform for a live audience in a faculty supervised production. Explore choreography and perform in a departmental dance concert.

Full details for PMA 1611 - Rehearsal and Performance

Introductory modern technique intended for students with some dance training. Material covered includes specific spinal and center work with attention to rhythm, design, and movement expression.

Full details for PMA 2220 - Dance Technique II/Modern

Weekly assignments in basic elements of choreography. 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.

Full details for PMA 2300 - Beginning Dance Composition

The importance of sports to American society and popular culture cannot be denied, and this seminar will study sports films' vital significance in representing the intersection of sports, history, and social identities.  This seminar explores how the role of competition between individuals and teams in sports films relate to the competing discourses on race, gender, class, and sexuality in society at large. Additionally, we will examine how social issues are understood in sporting terms and concepts, such as: the hero and the underdog; urban and rural; natural talent versus hard work; and the individual versus team identity.

Full details for PMA 2501 - Playing out Difference: History and Identity in Sports Film

Intensive consideration of the ways films generate meaning and of the ways we attribute meaning and value to films. Discussion ranges over commercial narrative, art cinema, documentary, and personal film modes.

Full details for PMA 2540 - Introduction to Film Analysis: Meaning and Value

Learn what it means to run a live show or a film festival. 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, assistant stage manager, production assistant or projectionist.

Full details for PMA 2610 - Production Crew Laboratory

Practical experience in the organization and management of a theatrical production as an assistant stage manager for a fully supported department production under the supervision of the staff stage manager.

Full details for PMA 2611 - Stage Management Laboratory

Opera has been enthralling audiences for 400 years; this course explores the multiple facets of its appeal. Using seven operas as the focus-chosen from different periods, national traditions, and styles-the class will examine the texts that have been turned into operas, the musical conventions that have guided composers (or against which they have worked), and the decisions directors make when they put operas on stage. Each work will be seen as well as heard-either in a special screening or, at least once in the semester, in a live performance. Students who have a strong background in music may wish to also enroll in MUSIC 3901, which involves an extra class-period per week where the music is discussed in greater detail. Permission of the instructor is required for this one-credit addition.

Full details for PMA 2633 - Music as Drama: An Introduction to Opera

This class aims to give students a good historical and critical grounding in Shakespeare's drama and its central place in Renaissance culture. Our study will include attention to dramatic forms, Shakespeare's themes, and social and historical contexts, including early modern English theater history. The course combines lectures and hands-on work in weekly discussions focused on performance, close reading, and questions raised by the plays. We will also view some film adaptations of Shakespeare. Fall semester plays include The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Othello, King Lear, Richard II, Henry IV Part One, and Henry V. Summer semester plays may vary.

Full details for PMA 2670 - Shakespeare

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.

Full details for PMA 2800 - Introduction to Acting

This course introduces students to the primary components of vocal technique in performance.  Over the course of the semester, students will work through a series of vocal exercises which provide the basis for good vocal practice and mediated performance contexts.

Full details for PMA 2830 - The Expressive Voice

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

Intermediate Western classical dance technique. Work is done on strengthening the body through a movement technique emphasizing presence and musicality based on harmonic muscular control.

Full details for PMA 3210 - Dance Technique III/Classical

Pan-African Drum and Dance Ensemble is an introductory performance course where students learn performance traditions from across West Africa. No prior experience is necessary. Students may choose to focus on drumming or dancing.

Full details for PMA 3212 - Pan-African Drum and Dance Ensemble

Intermediate modern technique focusing on rhythm, placement, and phrasing for students who are prepared to refine the skills of dancing. Students are challenged by complex phrases and musicality.

Full details for PMA 3220 - Dance Technique III/Modern

This course will explore questions of how we perceive articulations of identity on the moving body. How do histories and cultural behaviors define differences? What are the conventions of race, gender, and sexuality as we follow the body in performance across borders? With the use of text, film, and the fine arts, the class will in collaboration conceive, choreograph, and perform an original body of work.

Full details for PMA 3225 - Mapping the Moving Body I

Intermediate choreographic projects are critiqued in progress by faculty and peers. Consideration of design problems in costuming and lighting.  Weekly assignments in basic elements of choreography. 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.

Full details for PMA 3300 - Intermediate Dance Composition I

This course will cultivate collaborations between the practice and study of dance with fields such as architecture, engineering, landscape architecture, painting, digital arts, and other design and creative fields. The process of movement creation, spatial definition, and spatial analyses will be paralleled and interchanges will be made on a continual basis between chosen fields for each semester. Transposing between two, three, and four dimensional representations, concepts of framing, language (vocabulary), historical processes, concepts of performance and performativity, and concepts of audience are some of the topics that will be examined.

Full details for PMA 3351 - Transpositioning the Body I

From Al Capone to Tony Soprano, the mafia has been the subject of numerous films over the course of 70 years, so many in fact that one might well speak of a "mafia obsession" in American popular culture. Drawing upon a large number of American and Italian films, this course examines the cultural history of the mafia through film. We will explore issues related to the figure of the gangster, the gender and class assumptions that underpin it, and the portrayal-almost always stereotypical-of Italian-American immigrant experience that emerges from our viewings. The aim will be to enhance our understanding of the role of mafia plays in American and Italian culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. Film screenings will include Little Caesar, Scarface, Shame of the Nation, The Godfather Parts I and II, Goodfellas, The Funeral, Donnie Brasco, episodes from The Sopranos, and Gomorrah.

Full details for PMA 3410 - Screening Cosa Nostra: The Mafia and the Movies from Scarface to The Sopranos

This course examines both mainstream representations of and independent media made by, for, and about Asians and Asian Americans throughout U.S. cultural history. In this course, we will analyze popular cultural genres & forms such as: documentary & narrative films, musical theatre & live performance revues, television, zines & blogs, YouTube/online performances, karaoke & cover performances, stand-up comedy, and popular music. Employing theories of cultural studies, media studies, and performance studies, we will discuss the cultural, discursive, and political impact of these various popular cultural forms and representations from the turn of the 20th century to the present.

Full details for PMA 3420 - Asian Americans & Popular Culture

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.

Full details for PMA 3463 - Contemporary Television

An introduction (without prerequisites) to fundamental problems of current political theory, filmmaking, and film analysis, along with their interrelationship.  Particular emphasis on comparing and contrasting European and alternative cinema with Hollywood in terms of post-Marxist, psychoanalytic, postmodernist, and postcolonial types of interpretation.  Filmmakers/theorists might include: David Cronenberg, Michael Curtiz, Kathryn Bigelow, Gilles Deleuze, Rainer Fassbinder, John Ford, Jean-Luc Godard, Marleen Gorris, Werner Herzog, Alfred Hitchcock, Allen & Albert Hughes, Stanley Kubrick, Fredric Jameson, Chris Marker, Pier-Paolo Pasolini, Gillo Pontecorvo, Robert Ray, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Oliver Stone, George Romero, Steven Shaviro, Kidlat Tahimik, Maurizio Viano, Slavoj Zizek.  Although this is a lecture course, there will be ample time for class discussions.

Full details for PMA 3490 - Political Theory and Cinema

Blaxploitation films of the 1970s are remembered for their gigantic Afros, enormous guns, slammin' soundtracks, sex, drugs, nudity, and violence. Never before or since have so many African American performers been featured in starring roles. Macho male images were projected alongside strong, yet sexually submissive female ones. But how did these images affect the roles that black men and women played on and off the screen and the portrayal of the black body in contemporary society? This interdisciplinary course explores the range of ideas and methods used by critical thinkers in addressing the body in art, film, photography and the media. We will consider how the display of the black body affects how we see and interpret the world by examining the construction of beauty, fashion, hairstyles and gendered images as well as sexuality, violence, race, and hip-hop culture.

Full details for PMA 3505 - Blaxploitation Film and Photography

This course introduces students to documentary film production and story development. Through lectures, screenings, workshops, and technical labs, students will develop single-camera digital video production and editing skills. Weekly camera and editing exercises and one-on-one sessions with the instructor will enhance students' documentary filmmaking techniques. Additionally, students will gain an understanding of nonfiction film theory from the perspective of production and learn to critically engage and comment on each other's work. Discussions of debates around ethnographic representation and filmmaking ethics will help students to solve practical storytelling dilemmas. Over the course of the semester, students conduct pre-production research and have the opportunity to develop a film proposal and make a short film.

Full details for PMA 3510 - Documentary Production 1: Fundamentals

Light is the fundamental building block of all visual media. Whether a photographer, filmmaker, videographer, YouTube poster, or other maker of images, the strategic use of light can tell your story better, move your audience more deeply, and shape your composition more effectively. This studio course will take a hands-on approach to exploring different techniques of lighting, including location, kit, and grid systems. We will engage with both aesthetic and technical aspects of light. Students will come away with a deeper understanding of and appreciation for how light fundamentally affects and gives meaning to how we see the world.

Full details for PMA 3520 - Light and Image

This course explores the fundamentals of writing for the screen. The class format will include creative writing assignments, class discussion, screenings and workshop. Students will produce short film scripts, film analysis papers and feedback on student work. The semester will culminate in a revision of a longer film script and presentation.

Full details for PMA 3531 - Screenwriting

Global Cinema I and II together offer an overview of international film 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's relation to broader cultural, social and political contexts. Screenings of narrative, documentary and experimental films will be accompanied by readings in film theory and history. Global Cinema I covers the period from 1895 to 1960. Precise topics will vary from year to year, but may include: early silent cinema; the emergence of Hollywood as industry and a "classical" narrative form; Soviet, German, French and Chinese film cultures; the coming of sound; interwar documentary and avant-garde movements; American cinema in the age of the studio system; Italian Neorealism; the post-war avant-garde.

Full details for PMA 3550 - Global Cinema 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. 

Full details for PMA 3570 - Introduction to Visual Storytelling

This is a variable credit learning experience for students engaged in creating productions in the Department of Performing and Media Arts.  Students may act, assistant direct, assistant stage manage, or pursue dramaturgical research and will learn through various channels (lecture, discussion, participation in rehearsal, individual and group research) how to think about and realize artistic choices, appreciate the discipline and demands of theatrical craft, be exposed to the uncertainty required to experiment and explore in rehearsal, and understand more fully the strategies through which a collaborative team can realize a shared vision.  Assessment of this course will include audience response to a public performance that will be the end product of this creative collaboration. This complex, pedagogical journey will be guided by an experienced, faculty director/teacher who will be responsible for creating a process of production that assures learning for each student enrolled.   

Full details for PMA 3609 - Making Theatre: Rehearsal and Production Techniques

Collaborate with a faculty member in the development and production of a live event, in a mentored role of Assistant Designer, Assistant Director, or Assistant Choreographer.

Full details for PMA 3610 - Intermediate Production Laboratory

A studio 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). Confident drawing skill is expected.

Full details for PMA 3614 - Creative Character Design

This course explores the evolution of western dress from the time of the ancient Egyptians to the early twentieth century by focusing on areas of the human anatomy and how each area has been presented, comported, supported, augmented, confined, or manipulated in costume.  Rather than indulging in the strange, we will endeavor to come to an understanding of the motivation for each gesture or the catalyst for each phenomenon in the context of the period, taking into consideration social, political, economic, environmental, technological, and aesthetic influences.

Full details for PMA 3616 - The Body of Fashion: A Head-to-Toe Journey through the History of Western Dress

The theory and practice of lighting design as a medium for artistic expression. This course explores the aesthetic and mechanical aspects of light and their application in a variety of disciplines. Emphasis is on understanding lighting's function in an environment and manipulating light effectively. Artistic style and viewpoint are also covered.

Full details for PMA 3620 - Lighting Design Studio I

An exploration of the scene design process for the live theatre. Students will execute design projects employing various media (e.g., sketches, paper models, computer graphics) that examine how elements of stage craft, architecture, and interior design can be employed to support and enhance the action of dramatic texts.

Full details for PMA 3640 - Scenic Design Studio

Exploration into the integration of art and science in today's theme parks and interactive entertainment attractions. Papers, projects, and discussions deal with planning and development aspects of large-scale entertainment projects including architecture, engineering, construction, and attraction installation. Focus is on the specialized entertainment technologies that make these attractions work: audio and lighting design, ride and show control systems, and special effects.

Full details for PMA 3670 - Themed Entertainment: The Technical Perspective

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.

Full details for PMA 3680 - Sound Design

"Sitcom Jews" uses close media analysis, theoretical discussion, and student performances or media projects to examine the representation of Jews on television and on the Broadway stage from 1948-2017. We'll ask whether study of performed Jewish identity can serve as a locus for discussion of cultural representation at large, including African American, Latinx, Asian American and LGBT communities on screen and onstage. Starting with classic sitcoms ("The Goldbergs" (1948), "All in the Family", and "Bridget Loves Bernie"), and continuing through current Jewish TV shows ("The Marvelous Ms. Maisel", "Transparent", "Curb Your Enthusiasm"), as well as major theater landmarks ("Fiddler on the Roof", "Cabaret", "Bad Jews", "Indecent"), we will compare these constructed media images to concurrent political, historical and cultural trends.

Full details for PMA 3711 - Sitcom Jews: Ethnic Representation On Television and On Stage

Tragedy and its audiences from ancient Greece to modern theater and film. Topics: origins of theatrical conventions; Shakespeare and Seneca; tragedy in modern theater and film. Works studied will include: Aeschylus' Agamemnon; Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, Philoctetes; Euripides' Alcestis, Helen, Iphigeneia in Aulis, Orestes; Seneca's Thyestes, Trojan Women; Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Titus Andronicus, Othello; Strindberg's The Father; Durrenmatt's The Visit; Bergman's Seventh Seal; Cacoyannis' Iphigeneia.

Full details for PMA 3724 - The Tragic Theatre

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 the major methodologies and paradigms for the creation, spectatorship, and interpretation of embodied performances. Our investigations of these issues will be routed through three organizing concepts: ritual, realism, and revolution.

Full details for PMA 3750 - Global Stages I

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

Full details for PMA 3800 - Acting II

In this introductory class, students will study elements of successful dramatic writing: strong structure, effective dialogue, and imaginative theatricality. Students will craft and revise short plays, in addition to drafting several short assignments and one analytical paper. Readings include full-length and 10-minute plays. Through giving and receiving constructive feedback, each writer will aim to take their work to new levels of complexity, theatricality, and meaning.

Full details for PMA 3805 - Playwriting I

A wholly physical acting course based in the practices of Commedia dell'arte-stock characters, physical lazzi, improvisation, street theatre-using improvisation, some mask work, clown and viewpoint training. An exploration of how to use the body to illuminate text, and how to mine text to maximize comedy.

Full details for PMA 3840 - Commedia: A Contemporization of Physical Acting Styles and the Comic Approach

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.

Full details for PMA 3880 - Fundamentals of Directing I

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

Advanced and pre-professional advanced ballet and modern technique. This class meets 4 days per week. This course is a combination of PMA 3210 and PMA 3220 in the same semester.  Attendance to concerts and related presentations, and short critical analysis of those events are required.

Full details for PMA 4222 - Advanced Dance Technique

This course will continue the critical inquiry investigated in Mapping the Moving Body. Intended for advanced students, it will address the dialogue between contemporary choreography and current sociopolitical theory. The class will choose to study one choreographer or theorist whose negotiations across critical boundaries of the global, postmodern space will afford a framework for the making of an original, collaborative work.

Full details for PMA 4225 - Mapping the Moving Body II

Pre-professional/Advanced ballet or modern technique with modern and contemporary ballet company repertory rehearsal and performances. This class meets 2 days per week, 3 hrs. 10 minutes per day with additionally scheduled rehearsal and performance times TBA. This course is a continuation of, and supplement to, PMA 3210 and PMA 3220.

Full details for PMA 4230 - Pre-Professional Technique & Repertory

Students work on advanced choreographic problems, to be presented in performance. Work in progress is critiqued by faculty members on a regular basis.

Full details for PMA 4300 - Advanced Dance Composition I

Continuation of PMA 4300. Intermediate choreographic projects are critiqued in progress by faculty and peers. Consideration of design problems in costuming and lighting.  Weekly assignments in basic elements of choreography. 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.

Full details for PMA 4301 - Advanced Dance Composition II

This course continues the work done in PMA 3351. At an advanced level, this course will further explore the choreographic and design principles of contemporary choreographer, William Forsythe, who began his tenure as an A.D. White Professor-at-Large in 2010. The course will begin by using tools developed by Forsythe in his CD ROM, Improvisation Technologies and will continue to be structured through student and faculty consultation. The long term goal is to establish curriculum that can continue to develop new performance and installation work based on Forsythe's philosophies in his various fields of interests and how they relate to concert dance. Collaborations between fields such as dance, architecture, engineering and other design fields will be cultivated.

Full details for PMA 4351 - Transpositioning the Body II

Examines the new cinemas of Southeast Asia and their engagement with contemporary discourses of gender and sexuality. It pays special attention to the ways in which sexuality and gendered embodiment are at present linked to citizenship and other forms of belonging and to how the films draw on Buddhist and Islamic traditions of representation and belief. Focusing on globally circulating Southeast Asian films of the past 15 years, the course draws on current writings from feminism, Buddhist studies, affect theory, queer studies, postcolonial theory, and film studies to ask what new understandings of subjectivity might emerge from these cinemas and their political contexts. Films will be drawn from both mainstream and independent cinema and will include the work of directors such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Danny and Oxide Pang, Yau Ching, Thunska Pansittivorakul, Garin Nugroho, and Jean-Jacques Annaud.

Full details for PMA 4451 - Gender and Sexuality in Southeast Asian Cinema

Radical transformations in our media landscape raise urgent questions for the field of cinema and media studies.  This course focuses on a topic drawn from current scholarly research.  They may include: theorizing the global, narrative and new media, queer/trans media paradigms, media and public life, media and migration, and critical race and media studies.  Weekly class meetings will combine discussion and short screenings; there may be additional screenings outside of class.

Full details for PMA 4501 - Special Topics in Cinema and Media Theory

The course will treat various aspects of Indian film, with focal topics to vary from year to year.  These topics will include religion in Indian film, Indian art films, and the golden age of Indian film.  All topics will be discussed in relation to the conventions of mainstream Bollywood cinema and their social and cultural significance.  Each week a film must be viewed to prepare for class discussion; screenings will be arranged as appropriate. No knowledge of an Indian language is needed.

Full details for PMA 4536 - Topics in Indian Film

A studio practicum that is the culmination of several semesters of coursework in choreography and design, this course is the student's preparation for an end of semester public presentation of an original experimental creative work focusing on the moving body. The student must exhibit strong competency in dance technique and show promise in choreography and group organizational skills to be accepted into the course.

Full details for PMA 4607 - Advanced Undergraduate Practice as Research in Dance

AUPR in Design is a capstone experience in practice as research. Student take a leadership role as a designer, working with faculty as peers on a fully supported departmental production. After taking courses in an appropriate design sequence, in consultation with a faculty mentor, gathering experience on production both in and outside the department, and exhibiting the necessary ability and drive, students may be invited to this program by the faculty mentor in their area of concentration.

Full details for PMA 4608 - Advanced Undergraduate Practice as Research in Design

The purpose of this course is to give interested and able undergraduate students the ability to gain skill and experience in the practice and art of directing.  To be considered for the AUPR-Directing, a student must first complete or be in the process of completing a series of demanding courses and experiences to assure that the student is ready to undertake the direction of a fully supported, PMA theatre production in the Schwartz Center.

Full details for PMA 4609 - Advanced Undergraduate Practice as Research in Directing

Full details for PMA 4800 - Advanced Scene Study

The function of the theatre critic is well understood, but the role of the dramaturg remains mysterious in the American theatre.  Yet theatre critics and dramaturgs use many of the same research, analytic, and writing skills, and need the same knowledge of history, literature, and culture, to perform their duties effectively.  This practicum, designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, will allow participants to develop the skills central to these complementary professions.  The course will include units on writing effective performance reviews, working with student playwrights on new script development, preparing informational materials for directors, designers and actors, writing program essays and other informational materials for audiences, script preparation for production, and selecting/preparing translations for production. While our focus will be on the theatre, students with interest in applying these skills to film/television/media or dance contexts are welcome.

Full details for PMA 4866 - Practicum in Performance Criticism and Dramaturgy

First of a two-semester sequence (the second is PMA 4951) for seniors engaged in an honors project.  You can find the honors guidelines and form at http://pma.cornell.edu/honors.

Full details for PMA 4950 - Honors Research Tutorial I

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

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. For complete information and application forms visit http://pma.cornell.edu/internships.

Full details for PMA 4952 - Undergraduate Internship

Radical transformations in our media landscape raise urgent questions for the field of cinema and media studies.  This course focuses on a topic drawn from current scholarly research.  They may include: theorizing the global, narrative and new media, queer/trans media paradigms, media and public life, media and migration, and critical race and media studies.  Weekly class meetings will combine discussion and short screenings; there may be additional screenings outside of class.

Full details for PMA 6501 - Special Topics in Cinema and Media Theory

This course introduces students to documentary film production and story development. Through lectures, screenings, workshops, and technical labs, students will develop single-camera digital video production and editing skills. Weekly camera and editing exercises and one-on-one sessions with the instructor will enhance students' documentary filmmaking techniques. Additionally, students will gain an understanding of nonfiction film theory from the perspective of production and learn to critically engage and comment on each other's work. Discussions of debates around ethnographic representation and filmmaking ethics will help students to solve practical storytelling dilemmas. Over the course of the semester, students conduct pre-production research and have the opportunity to develop a film proposal and make a short film.

Full details for PMA 6510 - Documentary Production 1: Fundamentals

Global Cinema I and II together offer an overview of international film 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's relation to broader cultural, social and political contexts. Screenings of narrative, documentary and experimental films will be accompanied by readings in film theory and history. Global Cinema I covers the period from 1895 to 1960. Precise topics will vary from year to year, but may include: early silent cinema; the emergence of Hollywood as industry and a "classical" narrative form; Soviet, German, French and Chinese film cultures; the coming of sound; interwar documentary and avant-garde movements; American cinema in the age of the studio system; Italian Neorealism; the post-war avant-garde.

Full details for PMA 6550 - Global Cinema I

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

Full details for PMA 6600 - Proseminar in Theatre Studies

The function of the theatre critic is well understood, but the role of the dramaturg remains mysterious in the American theatre. Yet theatre critics and dramaturgs use many of the same research, analytic, and writing skills, and need the same knowledge of history, literature, and culture, to perform their duties effectively. This practicum, designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, will allow participants to develop the skills central to these complementary professions. The course will include units on writing effective performance reviews, working with student playwrights on new script development, preparing informational materials for directors, designers and actors, writing program essays and other informational materials for audiences, script preparation for production, and selecting/preparing translations for production. While our focus will be on the theatre, students with interest in applying these skills to film/television/media or dance contexts are welcome.

Full details for PMA 6866 - Practicum in Performance Criticism and Dramaturgy

The course will consider the aesthetic and politics of "touch" in dialogue with critical, artistic innovations.. Emphasizing differentiations between interactivity and immersion in art and theory, the course will discuss renewed critical emphasis on the legacy of phenomenology (from Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze to affect theory) in dialogue with recent writings on global critical race and sexual theory (Mbembe, Stoever, Ganguly, Lalu, Moten, Spillers, Cardenas).  Designed as an archive-based course, students will be invited to shape the second part of the syllabus around works featured in the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art and in the 2018 CCA Biennial on "Duration: Passage, Persistence, Survival" with the aim of staging a theory/practice final exhibit/performance based on conceptual approaches to "touch."

Full details for PMA 6920 - Aesthetics and Politics of Touch

Independent study in theatre 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 Theatre

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

Full details for PMA 7100 - The Pedagogy of Theatre

The voice occupies a peculiar phenomenological position, on one hand emanating from material bodies and conveying that materiality with register, mannerism, grain, and break; on the other hand existing as disembodied sound waves, and an internalized sonorous Other. This course will explore the many cultural and conceptual approaches to the voice and its role in the production of music, language, desire, subjectivity, embodiment, and the human.  Students will workshop projects developed within the course or already underway as part of a dissertation, article, performance, or recording.

Full details for PMA 7312 - Vocality and Embodiment

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

Full details for PMA 9900 - Thesis and Research Projects