Courses

Courses by semester

Courses for

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

Course ID Title Offered
PMA1130 FWS: Going Undercover: Radical Undercover Journalism and the (re)creation of Self
What would it be like to go through life as a completely different person? In order to expose and combat social injustice, journalists have crossed lines of race, gender, age, class and appearance and gone undercover, sometimes risking their reputations, sanity and even their lives. But what are the results of these experiments? Do the ends justify the sometimes ethically questionable means? How does "going undercover" affect an individual or a community? By examining works of John Howard Griffin, Sarah Jones, Morgan Spurlock, Barbara Ehrenreich, Norah Vincent and a variety of identity-probing texts, we examine the complex facets of diverse identities. The course facilitates a range of writing assignments and culminates in students devising and executing their own undercover journalism and research projects.

Full details for PMA 1130 - FWS: Going Undercover: Radical Undercover Journalism and the (re)creation of Self

Fall, Spring.
PMA1131 FWS: Performing the Past/Rehearsing the Future
PMA1149 FWS: Queer Women in Stand-Up Comedy
PMA1151 FWS: Spectacular Science: Writing for the Theatre and the Scientific Method
What happens when we represent the scientific experiment onstage? How can we use the scientific method to ignite creative modes of storytelling and critical analysis? In the cross-pollinations between science, theatre, and writing, what magical mutations emerge?

Full details for PMA 1151 - FWS: Spectacular Science: Writing for the Theatre and the Scientific Method

Fall.
PMA1153 FWS: Feeling Queer Cinema
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.
PMA1700 Laughter
What makes us laugh, and what doesn't? How does laughter vary from person to person, place to place, and across time? What work does laughter perform? Is it contagious? What does it mean to have (or lack) a sense of humor? What is laughter's relationship to pleasure and pain, health and wellness? In this course, we will experiment with the art of "making funny." Students will explore the science and psychology of humor, construct laughter through language and the body, analyze jokes (to learn how to tell them), and investigate the role of humor in a democratic society.

Full details for PMA 1700 - Laughter

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

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.
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.
PMA2560 American Cinema
From the beginning of the twentieth century to the present moment, movies -- and in particular Hollywood -- have profoundly influenced the ways in which people see, think and talk about the world. Focusing mostly on Hollywood film, this course introduces the study of American cinema from multiple perspectives: as an economy and mode of production; as an art form that produces particular aesthetic styles; as a cultural institution that comments on contemporary issues and allows people to socialize. We will consider the rise of Hollywood in the age of mass production; the star system; the introduction of sound and the function of the soundtrack; Hollywood's rivalry with television; censorship; the rise of independent film, etc. Weekly screenings introduce major American genres (e.g. science fiction, film noir, the musical) and directors (e.g. Hitchcock, Kubrick, Tarantino).

Full details for PMA 2560 - American Cinema

Spring.
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
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.
PMA2620 Performing Death and Desire: Vampires on Stage and Screen
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 2020: Titus Andronicus, King Lear, Twelfth Night, Merchant of Venice, and The Tempest, with films or filmed productions directed by Julie Taymor, Grigori Kozintsev, Akira Kurosawa, Trevor Nunn, and Fred Wilcox. For updates, see courses.cit.cornell.edu/sad4449/2080/. The class counts toward the pre-1800 requirement for English majors.

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

Spring.
PMA2683 American Shakespeare
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.
PMA2805 Explorations in Creative Collaboration
This intro level course introduces students to selected practical means of creating original, collaborative works of theater in response to a prompt, a theme, a text or other identified source material. In addition to their practical creative work, students study contemporary and historical figures and companies who make/have made devised theater works. Definition of devised theater: "a method of creating original performances by gathering a group of artists who bring their unique experiences to collaborate on the creation of a new product." (from Alison Oddey's Devising Theatre: A Practical and Theoretical Handbook)

Full details for PMA 2805 - Explorations in Creative Collaboration

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.
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

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.
PMA3228 Border Crossings: Dance and the Politics of Migration
This course explores our world, tragically divided and torn apart by walls of exclusion. How far are people free, with the right to choose where they belong and to take up the traditions of other cultures? What are the political and moral grounds dividing citizenship and statelessness? Art creates frames: the edge of the canvas, the boundaries of the performing space; but rather than restrictive, they are forms of inclusion, making communities across time and space. In dance, we identify ourselves by seeking recognition and recognizing one another. By studying such examples of intercultural exchange as hip hop, circle dance, the Dabkeh, we explore the power of dance to negotiate questions of personhood, authenticity, appropriation – transgressing and transcending, reframing the politics of identity and mobility.

Full details for PMA 3228 - Border Crossings: Dance and the Politics of Migration

Spring.
PMA3350 Technology and the Moving Body I
Formally titled "technosomakinesics," this class works to expand the specific aesthetics related to dance as embodied performance. Included in the process is the analysis of built environments that both inspire and are designed to be inhabited by these disciplines. This studio course explores the resulting neoperformance forms being created within the range of digital media processing; such as gallery installations, multimedia dance-theatre, personal interactive media (games and digital art) and web projects. Computer-imaging and sound-production programs are examined and used in the class work (human form-animation software, vocal recording and digital editing, digital-imaging tools. The new context of digital performance raises questions concerning the use of traditional lighting, set, costume, and sound-design techniques that are examined as they are repositioned by digital-translation tools with the goal of creating experimental and/or conceptual multimedia performance and/or installation work. Theoretical texts on dance and theatrical performance, film studies, the dynamic social body, architecture, and digital technology are also used to support conceptual creative work.

Full details for PMA 3350 - Technology and the Moving Body I

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, transgender 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.
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.
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

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.
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.
PMA3615 Costume Construction Studio
Introduction to draping and patterning basics followed by research, experimentation, and translation of historic silhouettes and structure. Previous basic machine sewing experience helpful, but not required.

Full details for PMA 3615 - Costume Construction Studio

Spring.
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.

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.
PMA3724 The Tragic Theatre
Tragedy and its audiences from ancient Greece to modern theater and film. Topics: origins of theatrical conventions; Shakespeare and Seneca; tragedy in modern theater and film. Works studied will include: Aeschylus' Agamemnon; Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, Philoctetes; Euripides' Alcestis, Helen, Iphigeneia in Aulis, Orestes; Seneca's Thyestes, Trojan Women; Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Titus Andronicus, Othello; Strindberg's The Father; Durrenmatt's The Visit; Bergman's Seventh Seal; Cacoyannis' Iphigeneia.

Full details for PMA 3724 - The Tragic Theatre

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

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.
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

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.
PMA3865 On the Fringe - New Plays in Development
A laboratory approach to new plays involving text analysis, scene work, and interactions with the authors of unproduced work. Authors who agree to participate with the class will submit plays for study and rehearsal. Authors will be included in discussions of the work via SKYPE and other Internet tools. The course will work with various theatres and new play networks in selecting plays and authors. At least one Cornell playwright will be included in each semester. Whenever possible, international writers will be part of the makeup of the class.

Full details for PMA 3865 - On the Fringe - New Plays in Development

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 & 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.
PMA4401 Advanced Documentary Production
This production seminar is for students with basic documentary filmmaking skills who want to work with previously collected footage and/or are in production on a project in or around Ithaca. Over the course of the semester, students complete a documentary film based on an immersive engagement with their selected subject matter. Alongside watching and discussing relevant texts and films, students will complete exercises to help them focus their projects, build a cohesive narrative, learn script writing, brainstorm scene ideas, overcome narrative challenges, discover their aesthetic, and develop a film circulation plan. Students will regularly present new footage and scenes and explain their work in terms their goals for the final project. The course culminates in a public screening of students' independent video projects.

Full details for PMA 4401 - Advanced Documentary Production

Spring.
PMA4501 Special Topics in Cinema and Media Theory
Radical transformations in our media landscape raise urgent questions for the field of cinema and media studies.  This course focuses on a topic drawn from current scholarly research.  They may include: theorizing the global, narrative and new media, queer/trans media paradigms, media and public life, media and migration, and critical race and media studies.  Weekly class meetings will combine discussion and short screenings; there may be additional screenings outside of class.

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

Spring.
PMA4505 Playwriting II
PMA4532 Advanced Screenwriting
Focuses on the structure and style of the original web-series and long-form short screenplay, and incorporates extensive peer feedback, workshop, and revision. Students will produce and revise an original mid-length short film and/or show pilot, in addition to crafting a log-line, treatment, and pitch for their film.​

Full details for PMA 4532 - Advanced Screenwriting

Spring.
PMA4585 Advanced Film and Video Projects
A continuation of PMA 3570, Introduction to Visual Storytelling, students will dive deeper into creating story driven short form narratives. Students will have the opportunity to develop and produce a short film over the course of the semester. The expectation is the follow through of the filmmaking process, from story development, preproduction, production, post production and distribution. Students are expected to collaborate heavily and crew on each other's film productions, in various roles. Final film projects will be screened in a public, open-campus event at the end of the semester.

Full details for PMA 4585 - Advanced Film and Video Projects

Fall, 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.
PMA4661 Absurdism: Performance and the Uncanny
A survey of the origins and applications of the term Absurdism. What is the style it provokes? This course traces the roots, definitions, and contemporary resonance of Absurdism. How and why would we stage the impossible? How could we re-new the term for the 21st century—does a post historical post apocalypse necessitate a new approach? In this class we will investigate and perform the works of Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Sarah Ruhl, Charles Ludlam, Virginia Woolf and the Cirque du Soleil. We will also examine the pathos of silent film and consider the influence and the inheritance of The Uncanny by Sigmund Freud and The Creative Mind by Henri Bergson.

Full details for PMA 4661 - Absurdism: Performance and the Uncanny

Spring.
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

Spring.
PMA4701 Nightlife
This course explores nightlife as a temporality that fosters countercultural performances of the self and that serves as a site for the emergence of alternative kinship networks.  Focusing on queer communities of color, course participants will be asked to interrogate the ways in which nightlife demonstrates the queer world-making potential that exists beyond the normative 9-5 capitalist model of production. Performances of the everyday, alongside films, texts, and performance art, will be analyzed through a performance studies methodological lens.  Through close readings and sustained cultural analysis, students will acquire a critical understanding of the potentiality of spaces, places, and geographies codified as "after hours" in the development of subcultures, alternative sexualities, and emerging performance practices.

Full details for PMA 4701 - Nightlife

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.
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.
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.
PMA6619 Urban Representation
Urban Representation Labs are intended to bring students and faculty into direct contact with complex urban representations spanning a wide media spectrum and evoking a broad set of humanist discourses. Students will leverage archival materials at Cornell to launch new observations and explore unanticipated approaches to urban culture that derive from previously understudied archival materials. The goal is twofold: to demystify the representational technologies involved in presenting the city, and to unpack the political, cultural, and aesthetic values and priorities embedded in every form of presentation. Urban Representation Labs are offered under the auspices of Cornell University's Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Collaborative Studies in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities grant. For current special topic seminar description and application instructions, visit: http://urbanismseminars.cornell.edu/courses.

Full details for PMA 6619 - Urban Representation

PMA6701 Nightlife
This course explores nightlife as a temporality that fosters countercultural performances of the self and that serves as a site for the emergence of alternative kinship networks.  Focusing on queer communities of color, course participants will be asked to interrogate the ways in which nightlife demonstrates the queer world-making potential that exists beyond the normative 9-5 capitalist model of production. Performances of the everyday, alongside films, texts, and performance art, will be analyzed through a performance studies methodological lens.  Through close readings and sustained cultural analysis, students will acquire a critical understanding of the potentiality of spaces, places, and geographies codified as "after hours" in the development of subcultures, alternative sexualities, and emerging performance practices.

Full details for PMA 6701 - Nightlife

Spring.
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

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 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 for undergraduate theatre classes in all areas of the curriculum.

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

Fall, Spring.
PMA7401 Advanced Documentary Production
This production seminar is for students with basic documentary filmmaking skills who want to work with previously collected footage and/or are in production on a project in or around Ithaca. Over the course of the semester, students complete a documentary film based on an immersive engagement with their selected subject matter. Alongside watching and discussing relevant texts and films, students will complete exercises to help them focus their projects, build a cohesive narrative, learn script writing, brainstorm scene ideas, overcome narrative challenges, discover their aesthetic, and develop a film circulation plan. Students will regularly present new footage and scenes and explain their work in terms their goals for the final project. The course culminates in a public screening of students' independent video projects.

Full details for PMA 7401 - Advanced Documentary Production

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.
Top