Courses

Courses by semester

Courses for

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

Course ID Title Offered
PMA1144 FWS: Propaganda, Protests, and Performance
In our current political climate, where is the line drawn between politics and performance? How has performance historically been used to advance political propaganda? In what ways does performance facilitate real social change? From the suffragettes, to the oppression, immigrant worker's rights, to our current culture of political divisiveness theater is used to play on people's prejudices, emotions, and sense of justice. Using historical texts, articles, plays, and online news journals, students will explore a broad range of political theater while examining how performance shapes American culture and identities. The writing in this course is a mix of short essays, creative writing, and a research paper. Each assignment builds off the next, offering students lessons in summary, analyses, research, and finding their own voice.

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

Fall.
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.
PMA1147 FWS: Supercrips & Megavillains: Disability on Stage & Screen
PMA1148 FWS: Migration Performances: Concepts and Encounters
PMA1149 FWS: Queer Women in Stand-Up Comedy
PMA1200 Dance Technique I
Entry-level class. Covers the fundamentals of elementary dance training. Movement sequences focusing on rhythm, placement, and vitality of performance through an anatomically sound dance technique.

Full details for PMA 1200 - Dance Technique I

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. The workshops will be a mix of lecture and hands on experience with cameras, lighting and sound equipment. We will cover specific areas such as dollies and rigging, location sound and post production. Open to all skill levels.

Full details for PMA 1410 - Media Production Laboratory

Fall, Spring.
PMA1610 Production Laboratory
Learn what it takes to prepare a live show. Students work on getting scenery, costumes, and lighting ready for performance or for production. Gain the practical skills and learn to use the tools that are integral to the presentation of live art.

Full details for PMA 1610 - Production Laboratory

Fall, Spring.
PMA1611 Rehearsal and Performance
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

Fall, Spring.
PMA1670 Student Laboratory Theatre Company
The Student Laboratory Theatre Company (SLTC) is a group of student-actors who earn credit by acting in three scenes directed by students taking PMA 4880. Students enrolling in SLTC for credit earn 1 credit for two projects and 2 credits for three projects. SLTC also meets with directors once a week.

Full details for PMA 1670 - Student Laboratory Theatre Company

Spring.
PMA2220 Dance Technique II/Modern
Introductory modern technique intended for students with some dance training. Material covered includes specific spinal and center work with attention to rhythm, design, and movement expression.

Full details for PMA 2220 - Dance Technique II/Modern

Fall, Spring.
PMA2280 Dance Improvisation
The training and practice of skills for the spontaneous collaborative composition of movement performance. Students hone their abilities to invent and respond to each other and their environment to produce dances that engage their audience. This course coaxes inspiration, seeking to make it reliable and to keep it surprising. It offers the possibility of "training" one's movement instincts to respond relevantly and with spontaneity.

Full details for PMA 2280 - Dance Improvisation

Spring.
PMA2407 Reading Cinematic Horror
As one of cinema's most enduring and popular genres, the horror film has spawned a wealth of competing critical accounts: of its narrative and aesthetic conventions, its historicity within and beyond film industries, and the sources of its unlikely appeal. This course offers a semester-long immersion in the horror genre through these accounts, emphasizing the ways media scholars have theorized horror's significance, the unique properties of horror spectatorship, and the formal qualities of individual films. Rather than conducting a comprehensive historical survey, this course considers filmic examples in correspondence with key debates in popular and scholarly horror criticism.

Full details for PMA 2407 - Reading Cinematic Horror

Spring.
PMA2408 Mock Futures: Science Fiction Onscreen
Consider the Spielbergian nostalia of STRANGER THINGS, or BLACK PANTHER's fresh take on Afrofuturism. From beloved film reboots to birth charts, contemporary culture is obsessed with the future. But weren't we always? Regardless of whether films ally with dystopian or utopian attitudes, or are set in outer space or low-income south London, this course's critical treatment will ask how specific visions of the future themselves enact a kind of time travel—by reflecting on the present, and rephrasing the past. Selected texts will deal with cyborgs, aliens, haunted spaceships, and post-apocalyptic crises; they will also explore notions of gender and sexuality, theories of time and space, and the relationship between fantastic genre and allegorical critique.

Full details for PMA 2408 - Mock Futures: Science Fiction Onscreen

Spring.
PMA2493 Middle Eastern Cinema
Film industries in the Middle East, as in much of the rest of the world, emerged out of efforts at the national level. In the Arab world and Israel, the film industries reflect upon struggles of self-determination. The Iranian film industry underwent significant changes following the Islamic Revolution of 1979. By viewing a range of films from the Arab world, including North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as from Turkey, Israel, and Iran, we will consider the significance of these national rubrics and how they have shaped the work of filmmakers throughout the Middle East.   Films also reach beyond the boundaries of the nation, and so, we will consider how these films transcend national borders. On the one hand we will consider limit factors, like censorship, and the role of language and dialect on film viewership and distribution. And, on the other hand, we will consider the influence of external forces, such as the influence of foreign film markets in Europe and North America on filmmakers in the Middle East, as well as the effects of foreign financing—both from Europe and the Gulf States.  All films will be screened with English subtitles.

Full details for PMA 2493 - Middle Eastern Cinema

Spring.
PMA2510 Film Festival Production Lab
Learn the skills necessary to produce/curate/mount a film festival from planning to execution. The Centrally Isolated Film Festival (CIFF) involves students in all aspects of film festival organization, and welcomes students with skills in particular areas: publicity, design, administration, management, fundraising, solicitation of films, invitation of guests, reviewing films, curating the program, running the event itself. The course may span 2 semesters. There will be an informational meeting each fall semester to plan the coming year's events and time schedule.

Full details for PMA 2510 - Film Festival Production Lab

Spring.
PMA2610 Production Crew Laboratory
Learn what it means to run a live show or a film festival. Participate as part of a team to ensure all the elements work together and on time. Learn the intricacies of collaborating with a production group to create a unified artistic vision. Program lighting, sound, or video boards, or participate as a dresser, stage crew member, assistant stage manager, production assistant or projectionist.

Full details for PMA 2610 - Production Crew Laboratory

Fall, Spring.
PMA2611 Stage Management 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

Fall, Spring.
PMA2640 Theatrical Makeup Studio
This course introduces students to basic two-dimensional techniques of makeup design and application for the stage including corrective, old age, youth, likeness, cross gender, and animal makeups. The process of stylizing imagery in makeup design is explored.  Students will also work with false facial hair.

Full details for PMA 2640 - Theatrical Makeup Studio

Spring.
PMA2680 Desire
"Language is a skin," the critic Roland Barthes once wrote: "I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire." Sexual desire has a history, even a literary history, which we will examine through an introductory survey of European dramatic literature from the Ancient Greeks to the present, as well as classic readings in sexual theory, including Plato, Freud, Foucault, and contemporary feminist and queer theory.

Full details for PMA 2680 - Desire

Spring.
PMA2681 Shakespeare and the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
What can we learn about Shakespeare's plays from their reception by late modernity? What can we learn about modern cultures from the way they appropriate these texts and the Shakespeare mystique? We will study five plays and their adaptations in film and theater and explore the uses made of Shakespeare in education, advertising, and public culture and by the Shakespeare industry itself.  For spring 2019: Richard III, Othello, Macbeth, Taming of the Shrew, and Midsummer Night's Dream, with films or filmed productions directed by Richard Loncraine, Trevor Nunn, Janet Suzman, George Sidney, and Julie Taymor. For updates, see http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/sad4449/2080/.

Full details for PMA 2681 - Shakespeare and the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Spring.
PMA2703 Thinking Media
From hieroglyphs to HTML, ancient poetry to audiotape, and Plato's cave to virtual reality, "Thinking Media" offers a multidisciplinary introduction to the most influential media formats of the last three millennia. Featuring an array of guests from across Cornell, including faculty from Communication, Comparative Literature, English, German Studies, Information Science, Music, and Performing & Media Arts, the course will present diverse perspectives on how to think with, against, and about media in relation to the public sphere and private life, archaeology and science fiction, ethics and aesthetics, identity and difference, labor and play, knowledge and power, expression and surveillance, and the generation and analysis of data.

Full details for PMA 2703 - Thinking Media

Spring.
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.
PMA2901 Spanish Performance Studio: RVVR Caberet Literario
This studio class will introduce students to a range of contemporary performance techniques in a Spanish context.  Through exercises, improvisation, textual analysis, and scene study, students will develop core acting skills, learn relevant Spanish theatre terminology, and enhance their self-expression in Spanish.  Students will also explore the dramatic and theatrical potential of short Spanish literary texts adapted for the stage.  The course will be conducted entirely in Spanish.

Full details for PMA 2901 - Spanish Performance Studio: RVVR Caberet Literario

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, Summer.
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, Summer.
PMA3212 Pan-African Drum and Dance Ensemble
Pan-African Drum and Dance Ensemble is an introductory performance course where students learn performance traditions from across West Africa. No prior experience is necessary. Students may choose to focus on drumming or dancing.

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

PMA3213 Introduction to Hip Hop
This course brings together students, library curators, and invited musicians and performers to explore the history of Hip Hop music and culture in Cornell University Library's Hip Hop Collection.  Sessions will be held in Kroch Library and will include interaction with artifacts in the Cornell Hip Hop Collection, the largest archive in the world on the subject. Students will learn about Hip Hop's origins, spread, its core artistic elements (rapping, DJing, breakdancing, and graffiti art) and how they have evolved over the past 40 years. Classes will be structured around discussions, examination of archival materials, and will include guest lectures by some of Hip Hop's originators and innovators.

Full details for PMA 3213 - Introduction to Hip Hop

Spring.
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, Summer.
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

Spring.
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.
PMA3421 Literary Theory on the Edge
Without literary theory, there is no idea of literature, of criticism, of culture. While exciting theoretical paradigms emerged in the late 20th century, including structuralism and poststructuralism, this course extends theoretical inquiry into its most exciting current developments, including performance studies, media theory and cinema/media studies, the digital humanities, trauma theory, trangender studies, and studies of the Anthropocene. Taught by two Cornell professors active in the field, along with occasional invited guests, lectures and class discussions will provide students with a facility for close textual analysis, a knowledge of major currents of thought in the humanities, and an appreciation for the uniqueness and complexity of language and media. This course may involve presentation of performance art.  Course open to all levels; no previous knowledge of literary or cultural theory required.

Full details for PMA 3421 - Literary Theory on the Edge

Spring.
PMA3481 Imagining Migration in Film and Literature
What role should imaginative arts play in debates about transnational migration, one of the principal factors re-shaping community and communication today?  Focusing on literature and film from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with primary examples drawn from Germany, France and the United States—in relation to Turkey, Hungary, Tunisia, Iran, Nigeria, China, Mexico, and Japan—this course explores how creative arts rework the fabric of social life affected by migration.  Seminar-style discussion of assigned readings and viewings, with occasional lectures on other arts and regions.  Thematic units organized around key concepts such as borders and movement, ethnoscapes and citizenship, reading and viewing, labor and leisure, cityscapes and place-making, mediascapes and personhood, lawfulness and illegality, language and speech, art and perception.   

Full details for PMA 3481 - Imagining Migration in Film and Literature

Spring.
PMA3510 Documentary Production Fundamentals
This course introduces students to documentary film production and story development. Through lectures, screenings, workshops, and technical labs, students will develop single-camera digital video production and editing skills. Weekly camera and editing exercises and one-on-one sessions with the instructor will enhance students' documentary filmmaking techniques. Additionally, students will gain an understanding of nonfiction film theory from the perspective of production and learn to critically engage and comment on each other's work. Discussions of debates around ethnographic representation and filmmaking ethics will help students to solve practical storytelling dilemmas. Over the course of the semester, students conduct pre-production research and have the opportunity to develop a film proposal and make a short film.

Full details for PMA 3510 - Documentary Production Fundamentals

Fall.
PMA3515 Video and New Media: Art, Theory, Politics
The course will offer an overview of video art, alternative documentary video, and digital installation and networked art. It will analyze four phases of video and new media: (1) the development of video from its earliest turn away from television; (2) video's relation to art and installation; (3) video's migration into digital art; (4) the relation of video and new media to visual theory and social movements. Screenings will include early political and feminist video (Ant Farm, Rosler, Paper Tiger TV, Jones), conceptual video of the '80s and '90s (Vasulka, Lucier, Viola, Hill), gay and multicultural video of the '90s (Muntadas, Riggs, Piper, Fung, Parmar), networked and activist new media of the 21st century (Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Disturbance Theater, SubRosa, Preemptive Media). Secondary theoretical readings on postmodernism, video theory, multicultural theory, and digital culture will provide students with a cultural and political context for the discussion of video and new media style, dissemination, and reception.

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

Spring.
PMA3525 New German Cinema
This course introduces the New German Cinema (1962-85), an influential movement of West German filmmakers including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, Margarethe von Trotta, and Wim Wenders. Like the French New Wave, the New German Cinema is known not only for grappling with the nation's complex history, but also for experimenting with early multimedia forms. Watching the movement's celebrated films and reading its controversial texts, we will discuss the complex search for national identity after World War II; problems of authorship, genre, and cinematic traditions; and the changing conceptions of media and the public sphere. Students without experience in film studies are welcome—the course will also double as an introduction to discussing and analyzing film. Screenings in German with English subtitles.

Full details for PMA 3525 - New German Cinema

Spring.
PMA3531 Screenwriting
This course explores the fundamentals of writing for the screen. The class format will include creative writing assignments, class discussion, screenings and workshop. Students will produce short film scripts, film analysis papers and feedback on student work. The semester will culminate in a revision of a longer film script and presentation.

Full details for PMA 3531 - Screenwriting

Fall, Spring.
PMA3551 Global Cinema II
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.

Full details for PMA 3551 - Global Cinema II

Spring.
PMA3570 Introduction to Visual Storytelling
An introduction to filmmaking, students will learn to create compelling characters, as well as develop strong storytelling skills through basic character and story development and breakdown, cinematography, lighting, sound and editing. Over the course of the semester, students will deconstruct and analyze visual culture in an effort to learn effective techniques in visual storytelling. Students will write, shoot and edit a series of dramatic narrative exercises, participating in the preproduction to post production processes. Students will collaborate and rotate through various roles. The course will culminate with the screening of the various course projects, in a public, open-campus event at the end of the semester. 

Full details for PMA 3570 - Introduction to Visual Storytelling

Fall.
PMA3609 Making Theatre: Rehearsal and Production Techniques
This is a variable credit learning experience for students engaged in creating productions in the Department of Performing and Media Arts.  Students may act, assistant direct, assistant stage manage, or pursue dramaturgical research and will learn through various channels (lecture, discussion, participation in rehearsal, individual and group research) how to think about and realize artistic choices, appreciate the discipline and demands of theatrical craft, be exposed to the uncertainty required to experiment and explore in rehearsal, and understand more fully the strategies through which a collaborative team can realize a shared vision.  Assessment of this course will include audience response to a public performance that will be the end product of this creative collaboration. This complex, pedagogical journey will be guided by an experienced, faculty director/teacher who will be responsible for creating a process of production that assures learning for each student enrolled.   

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

Fall, spring.
PMA3610 Intermediate Production Laboratory
Collaborate with a faculty member in the development and production of a live event, in a mentored role of Assistant Designer, Assistant Director, or Assistant Choreographer.

Full details for PMA 3610 - Intermediate Production Laboratory

Fall, Spring.
PMA3640 Scenic Design Studio
An exploration of the scene design process for the live theatre. Students will execute design projects employing various media (e.g., sketches, paper models, computer graphics) that examine how elements of stage craft, architecture, and interior design can be employed to support and enhance the action of dramatic texts.

Full details for PMA 3640 - Scenic Design Studio

Fall.
PMA3650 Automated Lighting and Control Systems
The understanding and application of lighting control technologies is crucial to the use of light as a medium of expression. Emphasis will be on console programming to create and support artistic performance.  Students will complete a series of projects involving the set-up and programming of automated fixtures in live and studio venues. (DE)

Full details for PMA 3650 - Automated Lighting and Control Systems

Spring.
PMA3660 Costume Design Studio
Design of costumes for theatre and film, concentrating on script and character analysis, period research, design elements, figure drawing and rendering skills, and an understanding of production style.

Full details for PMA 3660 - Costume Design Studio

Spring.
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.
PMA3751 Global Stages II
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: conquest, commerce, and community.

Full details for PMA 3751 - Global Stages II

Spring.
PMA3752 Thirteen Plays
A survey of the dramatic tradition in England and America through close reading of thirteen plays, as well as videos of their performance, ranging from Marlowe to the present. We'll examine texts both as literary works, constructed of words, and as blueprints for performance, constructed of suggestions for creating a social interactive experience. We'll consider: How does each play represent the distinction between a private person, and personality as a social construct? How does the play represent the idea of a social system or milieu? Plays may include Marlowe's Edward II, Shakespeare's Richard II (which follows from it), and Jonson's Barthololomew Fair; comedies from the Restoration and eighteenth century; twentieth-century British and Anglo-Irish plays by Beckett, Pinter, and Friel; and American plays by Arthur Miller, August Wilson, and Tony Kushner. Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns will represent our own century.

Full details for PMA 3752 - Thirteen Plays

Spring.
PMA3753 Drama Across Borders: The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary Theatre in Translation
Drama Across Borders will track the journey of several contemporary plays translated to and from English. We will explore how plays transform in translation and attain a different meaning in a new language and context. Among other case studies, we will discover how a play in Arabic from Syria makes its way to an English-language staging in New York, and follow the voyage of a Pulitzer-prize winning American play to its Mandarin Chinese world-premiere in Beijing. Beyond the literal translation of the text, this course will investigate how drama crosses borders through the casting of actors, costume and set design, direction, music, and promotion. We will read plays, essays, see live performances, watch videos, and welcome guest artists. All course materials in English.

Full details for PMA 3753 - Drama Across Borders: The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary Theatre in Translation

Spring.
PMA3758 Contemporary American Theatre on Stage and Screen
How has theatre shaped our notion of America and Americans in the second half of the 20th century and beyond? What role has politics played in recent theatrical experimentation? How has performance been used as a platform for constructing and deconstructing concepts of identity, community, and nationality? And how and why have certain plays in this era been translated to the screen? In this course we will examine major trends in the American theatre from 1960 to the present. We will focus on theatre that responds directly to or intervenes in moments of social turmoil, including: the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Movement, and the AIDS epidemic. We will also explore the tensions between Broadway and alternative theatre production.

Full details for PMA 3758 - Contemporary American Theatre on Stage and Screen

Spring.
PMA3770 Shakespeare: The Late Plays
The course focuses on Shakespeare's middle to late plays, from the "problem comedies," through the great tragedies and romances.  While we will pay particular attention to questions of dramatic form (genre) and historical context (including ways in which the plays themselves call context into question), the primary concentration will be on careful close readings of the language of the play-texts, in relation to critical questions of subjectivity, power, and art. On the way, we will encounter problems of sexuality, identity, emotion, the body, family, violence, politics, God, the nation, nature and money (not necessarily in that order).

Full details for PMA 3770 - Shakespeare: The Late Plays

Spring.
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.
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 the student him/herself. 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.

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

Spring.
PMA4190 American Shakespeare
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 & 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 & Repertory

Fall, Spring.
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.
PMA4504 The City: Asia
This course uses the lens of temporality to track transformations in notions of urban personhood and collective life engendered by recent trans-Asia economic shifts. We will develop tools that help unpack the spatial and cultural forms of density and the layered histories that define the contemporary urban fabric of cities such as Hanoi, Bangkok, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. The course combines the investigation of the cinemas and literatures of the region with the study of recent writing on cities from Asian studies, film studies, queer theory, urban studies, political theory, religious studies, cultural geography, literary theory, and anthropology.

Full details for PMA 4504 - The City: Asia

Spring.
PMA4505 Playwriting II
This course builds on skills developed in Playwriting I. Focusing on the development of longer scripts and the process of getting them to the stage, students will write a long one act play, and the materials to market it. The class will involve daily exercises, lessons on various issues of craft and the business of playwriting, and substantial workshopping and revision. Students will learn how to research opportunities for sending their work out and will leave the class with a polished script, a sense of themselves as writers, and the skills to take their play into production.

Full details for PMA 4505 - Playwriting II

Spring.
PMA4607 Advanced Undergraduate Practice as Research in Dance
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

Fall, Spring.
PMA4608 Advanced Undergraduate Practice as Research in Design
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

Fall, Spring.
PMA4620 Lighting Design Studio II
Concentrates on designing lighting for different genres of performance in various venues. Emphasis is placed on developing both the visual sophistication and the technical artistry of the lighting designer. Commitment, personal style, and professional presentation are stressed.

Full details for PMA 4620 - Lighting Design Studio II

Spring.
PMA4660 Adaptation: Text/Theatricality
Mounting a script into a show is a process of adaptation from page to stage. This course challenges the boundaries of text to discover the possibilities of performance. Asks: How do we translate inspiration into tangible (or intangible) theatrical imagery? Working in workshop format as actors and writers, students explore the process of developing theatre pieces based on a variety of sources. 

Full details for PMA 4660 - Adaptation: Text/Theatricality

Spring.
PMA4680 Prison Theatre and the Possibilities of Transformation
To explore cultural aspects of imprisonment through a focus on theatre produced by those incarcerated.  Does making theatre in prison seem to assist in transformation? Students create work with PPTG members in lab sessions, do narrative interviews, create annotated Internet data base.

Full details for PMA 4680 - Prison Theatre and the Possibilities of Transformation

Spring.
PMA4820 Agents of Change: Community Organizing for the Public Good
Democracy is more than a system of government. It's a way of life. It's a kind of politics that involves the development and exercise of power and the performance of civic roles on and off public stages. How can we achieve the promise of democracy in today's world? How can we engage in public work as effective and ethical change agents of change? And how can we build and sustain a public culture that develops and honors the knowledge, talents, capacities, and expertise of a diverse population? We will take these questions up together in this course through case studies, personal experiences, readings, narrative interviews, skill-building workshops, and field trips.

Full details for PMA 4820 - Agents of Change: Community Organizing for the Public Good

Spring.
PMA4825 Staging Dissent: Theater and Social Change
This class will explore the wide and varied application of theatrical techniques and practices to struggles for social justice in diverse historical moments, cultural contexts, and geographic locales. Framed by theoretical investigations into the relationships among performance, politics, and civic engagement, this participatory course will examine how power relations "play" themselves out in grand "spectacles," how authorities "mask" their privilege, and how social "actors" use theatricality to "(re)stage" repressive social "scripts."  We will investigate theater's function as a forum for rethinking and rehearsing notions of agency, citizenship, and community by analyzing and devising performances aimed at fomenting personal, collective, and institutional change.

Full details for PMA 4825 - Staging Dissent: Theater and Social Change

Spring.
PMA4880 Fundamentals of Directing II
Builds on the directing techniques learned in Fundamentals of Directing I. In this course each student directs actors from the Student Laboratory Theatre Company in a series of projects and public presentations focusing on specific directorial challenges.

Full details for PMA 4880 - Fundamentals of Directing II

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.
PMA4966 Viewing Black Girlhood
This seminar explores the narratives of Black girlhood in contemporary media and popular culture. This exploration will also deal with the dearth of existing narratives around Black girlhood and the complexities of their lived experiences in education, sexuality, and interaction with authority.

Full details for PMA 4966 - Viewing Black Girlhood

Spring.
PMA6510 Documentary Production Fundamentals
This course introduces students to documentary film production and story development. Through lectures, screenings, workshops, and technical labs, students will develop single-camera digital video production and editing skills. Weekly camera and editing exercises and one-on-one sessions with the instructor will enhance students' documentary filmmaking techniques. Additionally, students will gain an understanding of nonfiction film theory from the perspective of production and learn to critically engage and comment on each other's work. Discussions of debates around ethnographic representation and filmmaking ethics will help students to solve practical storytelling dilemmas. Over the course of the semester, students conduct pre-production research and have the opportunity to develop a film proposal and make a short film.

Full details for PMA 6510 - Documentary Production Fundamentals

Fall.
PMA6551 Global Cinema II
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 II covers the period from 1960 to the present. Precise topics will vary from year to year, but may include: "New Waves" in Italy, France, Germany, Japan; cinematic modernism; new modes of documentary; changing technologies of sound and image; avant-garde and experimental cinema; "New" Hollywood; "counter-cinema" and underground film; feminist film theory and practice; Hollywood's enduring importance; popular cinema in China, India, Brazil; the impact of television, video and the digital revolution.

Full details for PMA 6551 - Global Cinema II

Spring.
PMA6600 Proseminar in Theatre Studies
An introduction to the theory and methods involved in the study of the theatre. Attention focuses on pedagogy and the profession in Part I. Part II explores current scholarly trends.

Full details for PMA 6600 - Proseminar in Theatre Studies

Fall, Spring.
PMA6818 Race, Performance, and Sound Studies
This course engages with new and foundational writings in sound studies that center the racialized body -- be it of the performer, listener, or critic -- as well as racialized histories, places, and practices. This interdisciplinary course will study methodological tools, critical concepts, and readings drawn from queer, feminist, black, Latinx, Asian American, and postcolonial approaches, to name a few. We will engage with the role of sound and its technologies throughout U.S. history (i.e. slavery, wars and empire, social movements, immigration & migration, militarism) as well as the ways in which racialized performers, listeners, and critics have labored within and against these sonic regimes, imagining new politics, practices, and ways of being.

Full details for PMA 6818 - Race, Performance, and Sound Studies

Spring.
PMA6825 Staging Dissent: Theater and Social Change
This class will explore the wide and varied application of theatrical techniques and practices to struggles for social justice in diverse historical moments, cultural contexts, and geographic locales. Framed by theoretical investigations into the relationships among performance, politics, and civic engagement, this participatory course will examine how power relations "play" themselves out in grand "spectacles," how authorities "mask" their privilege, and how social "actors" use theatricality to "(re)stage" repressive social "scripts." We will investigate theater's function as a forum for rethinking and rehearsing notions of agency, citizenship, and community by analyzing and devising performances aimed at fomenting personal, collective, and institutional change.

Full details for PMA 6825 - Staging Dissent: Theater and Social Change

Spring.
PMA6966 Viewing Black Girlhood
This seminar explores the narratives of Black girlhood in contemporary media and popular culture. This exploration will also deal with the dearth of existing narratives around Black girlhood and the complexities of their lived experiences in education, sexuality, and interaction with authority.

Full details for PMA 6966 - Viewing Black Girlhood

Spring.
PMA7000 Independent Study for Graduate Students in Theatre
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

Fall, Spring.
PMA7100 The Pedagogy of Theatre
Provides graduate students in the field of theatre an opportunity to work directly with a faculty member to explore pedagogical theory and practice for undergraduate theatre classes in all areas of the curriculum.

Full details for PMA 7100 - The Pedagogy of Theatre

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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