Courses

Courses by semester

Courses for

Complete Cornell University course descriptions are in the Courses of Study .

Course ID Title Offered
PMA1104 FWS: Gender and Crime: The Case of the Female Detective
"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

Fall, Spring.
PMA1145 FWS: Socks, Pads, and Other Stuff(ing): Drag 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

Fall, Spring.
PMA1152 FWS: Immersions and Engagements: Performance and the Evolution of Participation
This class will investigate work which demands or encourages interaction between audience and performer, examining various styles of interactive engagement in contemporary performance including Site Specific work, on site-collaboration/improvisation and Choose-your Own-Adventure. Contemporary performance often startles, surprises and instigates much more than a passive viewing from its audience. Immersive Performance, for example, eliminates the physical stage, placing its viewers at the center of the event necessitating a shift in perspective for all present. What would inspire an audience to leave its seats or change positions? What causes discomfort or distraction? What encourages (or demands) interaction? Class readings will include source inspiration material-contextual and video excerpts and performance texts. Students will be encouraged in their writing to examine the overall effectiveness of these pieces. What are the core artistic values and intentions of the work, the company, the author, or the group -who generated the work –how successful are these authors/creators in achieving these goals? Additionally, students will be asked to imagine their own immersive event.

Full details for PMA 1152 - FWS: Immersions and Engagements: Performance and the Evolution of Participation

Fall.
PMA1154 FWS: The Personal is Political: Feminist Performance 1900-Now
Is feminism a set of personal experiences, political ideas, or the ideology that women and men are equal? How has feminism been represented in the public sphere? How does feminist performance contribute to our understandings of identity, power, and community? Grounded in a study of dramatic literature and theatrical spectacles, this course discusses how women in theater contribute to and challenge prevalent understandings of history, gender identity, and masculinist ideas of power. With an emphasis on in-class discussions and peer editing, this class will foster and enhance each student's ability to produce coherent, concise, persuasive prose in the form of critical arguments. Students will analyze examples of performance through critical texts from fields of performance studies, gender and sexuality studies, and critical race theory.

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

Fall.
PMA1160 FWS:Wonderlands and Other Worlds
Fantastic places often cut into reality with a "subtle knife" or fold it via tesseract. Transported to timeless noplaces masquerading as whimsical flights of fancy, like Neverland or Oz, we enter a wardrobe into dark, melancholy, even eerie imaginary lands. We journey alongside children touched by trauma, and together we navigate the most treacherous adventures: recovery and maturity. Through different writing assignments we will cross these thin borderlands into Lyra's Oxford, Martin's Fillory, Percy's Camp Half-Blood, Bastian's Fantasia, Eve's Bayou, or Miranda's Hanging Rock, and using critical strategies, explore them. With an emphasis on cinema and television adaptations (which are themselves familiar worlds transformed), and with particular foci on diverse identities, we will practice critical strategies to closely analyze and articulate in writing evidence-based arguments.

Full details for PMA 1160 - FWS:Wonderlands and Other Worlds

Spring.
PMA1161 FWS: Food and the Media
Ours is a food-obsessed culture. Whether we focus on diet and health, or binge-watch competitive cooking shows, or explore cuisine in relation to regional, racial, or ethnic identity, many of us either "eat to live" or "live to eat." Television producers, investigative journalists, bloggers, and cultural critics feed our obsession, generating a burgeoning body of food-related prose and programming both informative and entertaining. Through readings from Gourmet and Eating Well magazines, screenings of Beat Bobby Flay and The Great British Baking Show, and airings of Samin Nosrat's Home Cooking, among others, we will examine together how food suffuses our media and constitutes our Food Nation. Assignments will include food memoirs, food histories, food podcasts, food criticism, and food reporting.

Full details for PMA 1161 - FWS: Food and the Media

Fall, Spring.
PMA1168 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.

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

Fall.
PMA1169 FWS: African Cinema: From Script to Screen
What does it mean to tell stories from an African perspective? What artistic choices and challenges do African filmmakers explore to represent the multiplicities of the African experience? In what ways are these narratives an upliftment of a continent and its people, who are critically reclaiming agency for themselves in the global production of knowledge? By employing an interactive creative and critical praxis, this seminar will seek to maximize students' ability to think critically and write exploratively about African stories. We will consider how inspirations from history, lived experiences, African literature, and Afrobeats fuse to produce a dynamic practice for African cinema. Writing assignments will include short script developments, thematic analysis, film reviews and critical responses to trends within the African cinematic sphere.

Full details for PMA 1169 - FWS: African Cinema: From Script to Screen

Fall.
PMA1170 FWS: Text Me When You Get Home: Care as Survival
What does it mean when a friend tells you to "take care" and to text them when you get home? How does showing up for and caring about each other transform our futures? Using music videos by Lil Nas X and Janelle Monaé, television shows like Pose, and films like Moonlight, this course asks what care can look like and how it helps us survive. This FWS will give you an opportunity to think critically about popular media and written texts with specific attention to the works of queer and trans BIPOC. Students will write about topics of care, self-care, and futures through close readings of various texts and media, short critical essays, and discussion board posts with creative opportunities for extra credit.

Full details for PMA 1170 - FWS: Text Me When You Get Home: Care as Survival

Fall, Spring.
PMA1171 FWS: Re/presentations: The Politics of Queer BIPOC Artists
Can queer/BIPOC artistic practices subvert Western assumptions about identity and politics?  You do not have to be an artist to embrace the concepts, the beauty and rawness we will explore in this seminar.   We will look at artworks and at theories of queer and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, or Person of Color) subjectivities in the United States.  Think: Mickalene Thomas and Felix Gonzalez-Torres alongside José Esteban Muñoz and bell hooks.  Assignments may include writing for museum displays and catalogues, artist statements, and reviews.

Full details for PMA 1171 - FWS: Re/presentations: The Politics of Queer BIPOC Artists

Fall, Spring.
PMA1410 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.
PMA1610 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.
PMA1611 Rehearsal and Performance
Perform in a departmental theatre or film production, or dance concert. Research a role, develop a character, and perform for a live or mediated audience in a faculty supervised production. Explore choreography and perform in a departmental dance concert.

Full details for PMA 1611 - Rehearsal and Performance

Fall, Spring.
PMA2000 Media Studies Minor Colloquium
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

Fall, Spring.
PMA2300 Beginning 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.

Full details for PMA 2300 - Beginning Dance Composition

Fall.
PMA2465 Korean Popular Culture
This course introduces Korean popular culture in global context. Beginning with cultural forms of the late Chosŏn period, the course will also examine popular culture during the Japanese colonial period, the post-war period, the democratization period, and contemporary Korea. Through analysis of numerous forms of media, including films, television, music, literature, and music videos, the course will trace the emergence of the "Korean Wave" in East Asia and its subsequent global impact. In our examination of North and South Korean cultural products, we will discuss theories of transnationalism, globalization, and cultural politics. The course will consider the increasing global circulation of Korean popular culture through new media and K-Pop's transculturation of forms of American music such as rap and hip-hop. Readings for the course will be in English or in English translation and no prior knowledge of Korean culture is required.

Full details for PMA 2465 - Korean Popular Culture

Fall.
PMA2540 Introduction to Film Analysis: Meaning and Value
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

Fall.
PMA2610 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.
PMA2611 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.
PMA2670 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.

Full details for PMA 2670 - Shakespeare

Fall.
PMA2800 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.

Full details for PMA 2800 - Introduction to Acting

Fall, Spring.
PMA3000 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.
PMA3210 Dance Technique III - Classical
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

Fall, Spring.
PMA3214 Dance in America: Cultures, Identities, and Fabrication
This course explores dance across multiple stages—TikTok videos, concert halls, streets—to assess how people create, sustain, and challenge markers of difference (race, gender, sexuality, ability, and class). How is dance appreciation different from appropriation? What are dancing avatars in video games allowed to do that real persons are not? We will examine genres such as k-pop, hip hop, salsa, modern dance, and ballroom as we develop the tools necessary for viewing dance, analyzing it, and understanding its place in larger social, cultural, historical, and political structures. We will explore how markers of difference affect the practice and the reception of dance forms, and, in turn, how dance helps shape representations of identities.

Full details for PMA 3214 - Dance in America: Cultures, Identities, and Fabrication

Fall.
PMA3220 Dance Technique III - Modern
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

Fall, Spring.
PMA3225 Mapping the Moving Body I
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

Fall, Spring.
PMA3227 Global Dance II
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.

Full details for PMA 3227 - Global Dance II

Fall.
PMA3300 Intermediate Dance Composition 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

Fall.
PMA3351 Transpositioning the Body 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

Fall, Spring.
PMA3510 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 3510 - Documentary Production Fundamentals

Fall.
PMA3531 Screenwriting
This course explores the fundamentals of writing for the screen. The course 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

Fall.
PMA3550 Global Cinema I
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

Fall.
PMA3570 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. 

Full details for PMA 3570 - Film and Video Production I

Fall.
PMA3572 Environmental Film Production
From landscape cinema to underwater GoPro videos, environmental films connect issues of representation to conversations about climate change, the perspectives of plants and animals, and land politics. This course asks students to study these ideas, as they also pick up cameras to make their own films. Course readings will include a range of contemporary ecological perspectives, including texts from Feminist Science and Technology Studies, Black Studies, and Indigenous Studies. Screenings will include the work of filmmakers like Sky Hopinka, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, Thirza Cuthand, James Benning, John Akomfrah, and many more. In addition to reading and viewing, work for this course involves a series of video production assignments paired with short written responses, as well as exploratory outdoor exercises.

Full details for PMA 3572 - Environmental Film Production

Fall.
PMA3610 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.
PMA3614 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).

Full details for PMA 3614 - Creative Character Design

Fall.
PMA3630 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.

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

Fall.
PMA3633 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.

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

Fall.
PMA3661 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.

Full details for PMA 3661 - Costume Design Studio II

Fall.
PMA3680 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.

Full details for PMA 3680 - Sound Design

Fall, Spring.
PMA3740 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.

Full details for PMA 3740 - Parody

Fall.
PMA3750 Global Stages I
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

Fall.
PMA3755 Staging Gay and Transgender Histories
How have movements for sexual liberation used performance as a means of self-expression and strategies for social justice? How have theatrical stages served as sites of queer sociality and crucibles of invention, where history is made and remade by social actors?

Full details for PMA 3755 - Staging Gay and Transgender Histories

Fall.
PMA3757 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.

Full details for PMA 3757 - American Drama and Theatre

Fall.
PMA3800 Acting II
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

Fall, Spring.
PMA3805 Playwriting I
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

Fall.
PMA3815 Acting in Public: Performance in Everyday Life
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.

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

Fall.
PMA3880 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.

Full details for PMA 3880 - Fundamentals of Directing I

Fall.
PMA4000 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.
PMA4222 Advanced Dance Technique
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

Fall, Spring.
PMA4225 Mapping the Moving Body II
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

Fall, Spring.
PMA4230 Pre-Professional Technique and Repertory
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 and Repertory

Fall, Spring.
PMA4300 Advanced Dance Composition I
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

Fall.
PMA4351 Transpositioning the Body 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

Fall, Spring.
PMA4451 Gender and Sexuality in Southeast Asian Cinema
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 in 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 are 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

Fall.
PMA4675 Shakespeare in (Con)text
Examines how collaboration among stage directors, designers, and actors leads to differing interpretations of plays. The course focuses on how the texts themselves are blueprints for productions with particular emphasis on the choices available to the actor inherent in the text.

Full details for PMA 4675 - Shakespeare in (Con)text

Fall.
PMA4681 Cages and Creativity: Arts in Incarceration
This course 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 course 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 course will explore the increasing scholarship around the impact practicing the arts while incarcerated has on recidivism rates and preparation for re-entry.

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

Fall.
PMA4740 Fictions of Dictatorship
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

Fall.
PMA4801 Advanced Studies in Acting Techniques
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.

Full details for PMA 4801 - Advanced Studies in Acting Techniques

Fall.
PMA4821 The Politics of Movement: Bodies, Space, and Motion
This course 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? We will investigate theories that shape and contest our understanding of space, the body, and motion, and engage these themes by creating mini-performances.

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

Fall.
PMA4950 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.
PMA4951 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.
PMA4952 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.
PMA6510 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.
PMA6550 Global Cinema I
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

Fall.
PMA6600 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, Spring.
PMA6611 Minoritarian Aesthetics In-And Performance
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

Fall.
PMA6755 Staging Gay and Transgender Histories
How have movements for sexual liberation used performance as a means of self-expression and strategies for social justice? How have theatrical stages served as sites of queer sociality and crucibles of invention, where history is made and remade by social actors?

Full details for PMA 6755 - Staging Gay and Transgender Histories

Fall.
PMA6821 The Politics of Movement: Bodies, Space, and Motion
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

Fall.
PMA6920 Aesthetics and Politics of Touch
The course will consider the aesthetics and politics of "touch" in dialogue with critical, artistic experimentation. Emphasizing interactivity and immersion in art and theory, the course will discuss renewed critical emphasis on the legacy of phenomenology (from Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, and Deleuze to affect theory) in dialogue with recent writings on global critical race and sexual theory (Glissant, Spillers, Mbembe, Ganguly, Lalu, Moten, 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 2022 CCA Biennial on "Futurities, Uncertain" with the aim of staging a final text/exhibit/performance based on conceptual approaches to "touch."

Full details for PMA 6920 - Aesthetics and Politics of Touch

Fall.
PMA7000 Independent Study for Graduate Students in Theatre
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 Theatre

Fall, Spring.
PMA7100 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.
PMA9900 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.
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