"Women don't fit well into a trench coat and slouch hat," Marilyn Stasio has observed, yet female detectives can be found solving crimes and busting bad guys across media. Drawing from TV, film, fiction and theatre, this course explores the ways in which the female detective radically revises the conventions of the crime narrative in which she functions. Interrogating an inherent tension between gender and genre, we'll ask how different media construct female detectives and what gets re-visioned when Miss Marple and Clarice Starling fight violence and restore social order. By engaging with course texts, students will develop strategies for attentive reading and thoughtful writing. Assignments ranging from reviews to research papers will focus on critical thinking, preparation, clear prose, and papers structured around well-supported claims.

Full details for PMA 1104 - FWS: Gender and Crime: The Case of the Female Detective

Full details for PMA 1154 - FWS: The Personal is Political: Feminist Performance 1900-Now

Full details for PMA 1156 - FWS: Avant-garde Performances: Experiment in Theaters

Full details for PMA 1157 - FWS: Power and Horror: An Introduction to Critical Theory Through Horror Media

Full details for PMA 1158 - FWS: Connecting Across Borders: Creating New Media to Bridge the Divide

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

The Colloquium provides opportunities for exchange, reflection, discussion of relevant concepts, and extended engagement with the media objects made in a variety of Making Media courses.

Full details for PMA 2000 - Media Studies Minor Colloquium

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.

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

Full details for PMA 2300 - Beginning Dance Composition

In this course, we will explore over one hundred years of Japanese cinema – one of the most prominent and diverse global film industries – from silent comedies to J-Horror, "ramen westerns" to Studio Ghibli.  You will gain a thorough grounding in film vocabulary and tools of cinematic analysis, allowing for deep investigations of gender, genre, history, and the connections between film and other media in modern and contemporary Japan.  All films will have English subtitles, and all readings will be available in English; no prior knowledge of Japanese language, history, or culture required.

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

Full details for PMA 2452 - Introduction to Japanese 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.

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

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

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

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

In this introductory course, participants will study the economic and technological history of the television industry, with a particular emphasis on its manifestations in the United States and the United Kingdom; the changing shape of the medium of television over time and in ever-wider global contexts; the social meanings, political stakes, and ideological effects of the medium; and the major methodological tools and critical concepts used in the interpretation of the medium, including Marxist, feminist, queer, and postcolonial approaches. Two to three hours of television viewing per week will be accompanied by short, sometimes dense readings, as well as written exercises.

Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS)

Full details for PMA 2660 - Television

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: (LA-AS, ALC-AS)

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.

Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, ETM-AS)

Full details for PMA 2800 - Introduction to Acting

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

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

This course maintains a critical focus on the role of the moving body in the history of dance offering comparisons in theatre, film and other forms of media and live performance. Moving from the 16th century to present day, particular attention will be directed to the use of abstraction versus narrative and the role of process in the creation of body-centered works. Working both chronologically and conceptually, topics such as utopia, narrative impulse, technology, comparative modernities, political and social theory will enter the discussion. Attendance to live performance, film screenings, music concerts, museum visits and architectural and urban site visits will be required.

Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, GLC-AS)

Full details for PMA 3227 - Global Dance II

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.

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

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

This course explores the rich and diverse history of African American filmmaking.  Focusing on films written and/or directed by African Americans, this seminar traces the history of filmmaking from the silent era to the present day.  In exploring Black cultural production and creative expression, students will consider the ways in which film is used as a medium of protest, resistance, and cultural affirmation.  We will look at films through the critical lenses of race and representation in American cinema while locating our analysis within larger frameworks of Hollywood's representation of African Americans and various cultural and social movements within local and global contexts.

Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, SCD-AS)

Full details for PMA 3461 - Introduction to African American Cinema

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.

Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS, ETM-AS)

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.

Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, SCD-AS)

Full details for PMA 3505 - Blaxploitation Film and Photography

From White Chicks to Blackkklansman, American film has often depicted characters who conceal their race or gender, like black male cops "passing" as wealthy white women. This class will examine how Hollywood has depicted race and gender "passing" from the early 20th century to the present. While tracing common themes across films, we will also study the ideological role of passing films: how they thrill audiences by challenging social boundaries and hierarchies, only to reestablish familiar boundaries by the end. We will not treat these films as accurate depictions of real-world passing, but rather as cultural tools that help audiences to manage ideological contradictions about race, gender, sexuality, and class. Students will finish the course by creating their own short films about passing.

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

Full details for PMA 3507 - Hidden Identities Onscreen

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.

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

Full details for PMA 3531 - Screenwriting

This course will consider the history, theory and craft of feature film screenwriting. We will examine the vital elements of effective motion picture narrative (protagonist, pathos, objective, action), along with structural principles, genre conventions and emerging non-linear ideas. This is primarily a readings course (history/theory/criticism rubric), which will address effective screenwriting in a cultural and critical context.

Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS)

Full details for PMA 3533 - Screen and Story: Script Analysis

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.

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

Full details for PMA 3550 - Global Cinema I

In 1968, amongst cultural and political turmoil, the American film industry adopted the ratings system, which helped usher in the kinds of cinema we know today. This course focuses on developments in U.S. cinema since then: its politics, technological and economic transformations, relationship to other media, and changing ways in which people consume it. A main focus will be the aesthetic developments of films themselves: new and changing genres, new visual styles, new ways of storytelling, and ways in which new voices and visions have emerged. Weekly screenings will include mainstream, independent, and documentary films. The course can be taken as a complement to "American Cinema" (AMST 2760) or independently.

Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS)

Full details for PMA 3560 - American Cinema since 1968

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: (LA-AS, ALC-AS)

Full details for PMA 3570 - Film and Video Production I

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: (LA-AS, ALC-AS)

Full details for PMA 3571 - Documentary Filmmaking

This experiential learning class offers performance opportunities in the Department of Performing and Media Arts.  Students selected for 3609 projects will learn how to think about and realize artistic choices, appreciate the discipline and demands of performance craft, be exposed to the uncertainty required to experiment and explore in rehearsal, and understand more fully the strategies of artistic collaboration. Students will be assessed on their participation in the collaboration process, their ability to reflect upon and articulate their role and growth in that process, and their contribution to a public performance. Students must commit to a minimum schedule of 5-6 weeks of rehearsal and live public performance.

Full details for PMA 3608 - Making Theatre and Performance

This experiential learning class offers performance opportunities in the Department of Performing and Media Arts.  Students selected for 3609 projects will learn how to think about and realize artistic choices, appreciate the discipline and demands of performance craft, be exposed to the uncertainty required to experiment and explore in rehearsal, and understand more fully the strategies of artistic collaboration. Students will be assessed on their participation in the collaboration process, their ability to reflect upon and articulate their role and growth in that process, and their contribution to public performance. Students must commit to a minimum schedule of 5-6 weeks of rehearsal and 2 weeks of live public performance.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS)

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

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: (LA-AS, ALC-AS)

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

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: (LA-AS, ALC-AS)

Full details for PMA 3680 - Sound Design

Full details for PMA 3681 - Design, Creation and Operation of Systems for Sound Playback

"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.

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

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

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.

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

Full details for PMA 3750 - Global Stages I

In this course, we will critically examine the production and performance of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender through literature and contemporary performance genres such as spoken word, slam poetry, and hip-hop theatre.

Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, SCD-AS)

Full details for PMA 3754 - Spoken Word, Hip-Hop Theater, and the Politics of Performance

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

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

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.

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

Full details for PMA 3805 - Playwriting I

This course introduces students to public speaking as a pragmatic endeavor, through tools and types both historical and contemporary. Students will focus on analyzing speech contexts and developing presentational techniques, paired with practical exercises and critical analysis. Students will learn to: harness physical presence, develop vocal production & range, facilitate effective eye contact and gesture in order to present themselves and their material clearly, confidently, and persuasively. Investigating a variety of public speaking modes and situations, this course is designed as a practicum in public speaking skill-sets.

Full details for PMA 3814 - Public Speaking: Contexts, Techniques and Analysis

Telling jokes to a friend, making introductions, guiding meetings large and small, constructing and delivering business presentations, legal arguments or formal speeches are all examples of public performances.  The purpose of this course is to increase the student's effectiveness in meeting the demands and enjoying the opportunities of public performance.  The focus of this course is on the student as presenter on any subject, in any place, to any audience. What are the hallmarks of effective performance and how can you learn them? Employing techniques from actor/director training as well as dramatic writing, this course focuses the student on their own resources and self-imposed restrictions as a public speaker in everyday life. Subjects explored will include stage presence, audience connection, stage fright and mannerisms, speech making as storytelling, and gaining familiarity and finding comfort with one's own voice and gestures.  Public speaking will be taught as a craft that can be learned through understanding and practice.  Acting skill and experience are not required to take this course.   Students must, however, be willing to attend all classes and learn by doing.  Class size limited to 12 students.

Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ETM-AS)

Full details for PMA 3815 - Acting in Public: Performance in Everyday Life

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: (LA-AS, ALC-AS)

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.

Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS)

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.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS)

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Although the syllabus changes from year to year—emphasizing different themes—all films are discussed in relation to the conventions of mainstream Bollywood cinema and their social and cultural significance at different moments of Indian modernity. Topics that regularly recur include gender issues, religious differences, contrasts between the urban and the rural, and the ways in which class and caste issues are portrayed or elided.   Each week a film must be viewed outside class and several readings studied to prepare for class discussion; each student, moreover, will also be required to give an in-class presentation on a specific film that complements the main film for the week. Weekly response papers are required as well as some longer written work.

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

Full details for PMA 4536 - Topics in Indian Film

The seminar investigates the historical force exerted by projection technologies on the definition of the world as an image. It explores a spectrum of projection theories, histories of projective mechanisms, and artistic deployments of projected images. Readings will traverse a broad theoretical and disciplinary terrain from histories of cartography, cinema, and climate modelling to linear perspective and psychoanalysis. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website.

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

Full details for PMA 4553 - The World as Image: Projection Technology, Media, Representation

Having a voice is often seen as a central metaphor for a person's agency. Having a voice allows a person to be heard as well as to speak. Yet, how we speak or sing, and how our voices are heard is socially constructed and varies based on many different identity factors including race, gender, and sexuality. From black opera divas and transgender jazz musicians to lesbian rock singers and cross identity voice over actors, this seminar will explore how to analyze and make meaning out of the use of voices within music and media: materially, culturally, and historically. For additional information visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, SCD-AS)

Full details for PMA 4554 - Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the Voice

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

This class explores the increasing presence of all the arts in prisons throughout the country and examines the increasing scholarship surrounding arts programs and their efficacy for incarcerated persons. The course uses video's, archival material, reading material and in-person or Zoom interviews to investigate how and why art is taught in prisons. The class will also look at art produced by incarcerated artists as well as art by those who are still practicing after going home. And finally, the class will explore the increasing scholarship around the impact practicing the arts while incarcerated has on recidivism rates and preparation for re-entry.

Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS, SSC-AS)

Full details for PMA 4681 - Cages and Creativity: Arts in Incarceration

Fictions of dictatorship, as termed by scholar Lucy Burns, denote both the narratives and spectacles produced by authoritarian governments and the performances, events, and cultural objects that work against these states of exception. This course will critically examine histories of dictatorships, through both documentary & creative forms (i.e. novels, memoirs, and performance) and with a geographic focus on Asia and Latin America, in order to understand authoritarian returns in our present historical moment.

Full details for PMA 4740 - Fictions of Dictatorship

Class members can expect to 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: (LA-AS, ALC-AS)

Full details for PMA 4801 - Advanced Studies in Acting Techniques

This class interrogates new theoretical understandings about space and how bodies marked by various types of difference (race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, fatness, ability, and socioeconomic class) interact and move in it. We will uncover the visual, linguistic, and performative representations and social structures used in deciding which bodies are allowed to create and use spaces, and to what ends. We will ask questions that examine how people make claims to space. What kind of space does a performance engender? How do racialized and gendered spaces alter where performances can happen? This course is part-seminar and part-practicum. We will investigate theories that shape and contest our understanding of space, the body, and motion, and engage these themes by creating mini-performances. Previous performance experience is not necessary.

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

Full details for PMA 4821 - The Politics of Movement: Bodies, Space, and Motion

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.

Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS)

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.  Honor guidelines and form.

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. Find complete information and application forms on the department website.

Full details for PMA 4952 - Undergraduate Internship

Intensive consideration of the ways films generate meaning and of the ways we attribute meaning and value to films. Discussion ranges over commercial narrative, documentary, and personal film modes. Graduate students who intend to teach film at the undergraduate level are especially welcome. In addition to full participation in the work of PMA 2540, graduate students read and discuss primary sources in film theory in weekly group tutorials.

Full details for PMA 6540 - Introduction to Film Analysis: Meaning and Value

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

The seminar investigates the historical force exerted by projection technologies on the definition of the world as an image. It explores a spectrum of projection theories, histories of projective mechanisms, and artistic deployments of projected images. Readings will traverse a broad theoretical and disciplinary terrain from histories of cartography, cinema, and climate modelling to linear perspective and psychoanalysis. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for PMA 6553 - The World as Image: Projection Technology, Media, Representation

Having a voice is often seen as a central metaphor for a person's agency. Having a voice allows a person to be heard as well as to speak. Yet, how we speak or sing, and how our voices are heard is socially constructed and varies based on many different identity factors including race, gender, and sexuality. From black opera divas and transgender jazz musicians to lesbian rock singers and cross identity voice over actors, this seminar will explore how to analyze and make meaning out of the use of voices within music and media: materially, culturally, and historically.  For additional information visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for PMA 6554 - Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the Voice

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

What are minoritarian aesthetics? How do these inform the production and reception of performance, broadly defined? How does attending to the aesthetics involved in the production of artistic and cultural productions open up new ways of critically understanding the world around us? In seeking to answer these questions, and others, this seminar will introduce graduate students to theories and critiques that attend to the aesthetic dimensions of visual culture, scripted staged performances, performance art, and contemporary media created by Black, queer, Asian, Caribbean, and Latinx/Latin people. Drawing on the work of theorists Fred Moten, José Esteban Muñoz, Leticia Alvarado, and Sandra Ruiz amongst others, students will interrogate the dialectical relationship between the artist's subject position and their resultant creative and critical work.

Full details for PMA 6611 - Minoritarian Aesthetics In/And Performance

This class interrogates new theoretical understandings about space and how bodies marked by various types of difference (race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, fatness, ability, and socioeconomic class) interact and move in it. We will uncover the visual, linguistic, and performative representations and social structures used in deciding which bodies are allowed to create and use spaces, and to what ends. We will ask questions that examine how people make claims to space. What kind of space does a performance engender? How do racialized and gendered spaces alter where performances can happen? This course is part-seminar and part-practicum. We will investigate theories that shape and contest our understanding of space, the body, and motion, and engage these themes by creating mini-performances. Previous performance experience is not necessary.

Full details for PMA 6821 - The Politics of Movement: Bodies, Space, and Motion

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 Performing and Media Arts 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 Performing and Media Arts

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

Full details for PMA 9900 - Thesis and Research Projects