Note about overlapping courses
While some PMA instructors will allow students to enroll in classes that overlap, not all do. If your proposed Fall 2026 schedule includes overlaps, please consult with the faculty in question before enrolling so that you can adjust your enrollment plans if necessary.
PMA 1641 Introduction to Storytelling [Summer 2026]
Instructor: Kristen Warner
Class Schedule: MTWRF 2:30pm - 3:45pm (3 credits)
The objective of this course is to introduce students to a core topic that unites the tracks between performing and media studies: story. Throughout the semester students will explore the structures of film, television, and new media through the lens of storytelling. We will also examine how each of these mediums function at both the level of the individual consumer as well as the level of global society.
PMA 1611 Rehearsal and Performance (Dance) [Fall 2026]
Instructor: Danielle Russo
1-4 Credits
Rehearsal & Performance (PMA 1611) is a dance and performance project course that culminates in the Annual Dance Presenting Series for the Department of Performing & Media Arts (PMA), which will take place during the Fall Semester in Academic Year 2026/27. Students will learn, rehearse, and perform original choreographies by faculty and an acclaimed guest artist in a professionally produced mainstage show taking place on November 20 & 21, 2026. All genres, experiences, and levels are welcomed and embraced.
For students enrolling at 1 or 2 credits, you have the choice of participating in one choreographic work:
- Students participating in the faculty work will rehearse select Mondays and Wednesdays from 5pm to 7pm.
- Students participating in the guest work will rehearse on consecutive Mondays — Thursdays, from 5pm to 7pm during a 3-week concentrated period.
For students enrolling at 3 or 4 credits, you will participate during all scheduled rehearsal dates. (See above)
All students will participate during production week, which includes two public performances on November 20 and 21.
Students seeking PMA Major or Minor credit should enroll for a minimum of 3 credits.
Students interested in enrolling, please contact prof. Danielle Russo at drusso@cornell.edu for your permission code.
PMA 2400 Preproduction and Development [Fall 2026]
Instructor: Kristen Warner
Class Schedule: M 7:30pm - 8:20pm (1 credit)
This course is created to prepare students accepted into CULA into beginning the groundwork toward their independent study projects they will complete during the Spring study away experience. Additionally, because CULA operates in part as an immersion program, this course will begin their journey into understanding practices within the creative industries, including but not limited to accessing and understanding trade journals, industry jargon, and a preliminary understanding of the business structures they will be learning about during their semester away.
PMA 3452/5452 Filming Migration [Fall 2026]
Instructor: Sabine Haenni
Class Schedule: TR 10:10 am - 11:25 am (3 credits)
Location: Room 124, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
3 credits
What role should moving images play in debates about transnational migration, one of the principal factors re-shaping communities and communication today? Focusing on cinema from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with primary examples drawn from Germany, France, the United States, Italy, Denmark—in relation to Algeria, Senegal, Iran, Mexico, Korea, China, Benin, Turkey, Syria—this course explores how film re-imagines the fabric of social life affected by migration.
Seminar-style discussion of films are paired with contextual readings and readings from film studies. Key concepts such as borders and movement, ethnoscapes and citizenship, cityscapes and place-making, mediascapes and personhood, lawfulness and illegality, labor and leisure, language and speech, art and perception, scale and non-human migration, humanity and environment, visibility and intangibility will guide our discussions of films and readings.
PMA 3754 Spoken Word, Hip-Hop Theater, and the Politics of Performance [Fall 2026]
Instructor: Karen Jaime
Class Schedule: TR 12:20 pm - 2:15 pm (4 credits)
Location: Room 124, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
Cross-listed as LSP 3754/ FGSS 3754/ ENGL 3954/AMST 3754/LGBT 3754
Beginning with the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement, we will employ an interdisciplinary approach, placing theory directly into conversation with practice as we move to explore the ways in which poets and performers create work that engages with the politics of identity. How does the move from the page to the stage, change how traditional life stories are told? What role does the audience play? What avenues are then further opened up through the advent of contemporary performance practices such as hip-hop theater? What is the relationship between vernacular cultural productions and the performance of politics? What role, if any, does class play? How do genres such as spoken word, slam poetry, and hip-hop theatre serve to make visible the life narratives of people of a particular socio-economic class?
PMA 3691 Location Sound Recording and Post Production Audio Techniques [Fall 2026]
Instructor: Warren Dennis Cross
Class Schedule: TR 10:10am - 11:25am (3 credits)
The first half of the semester will focus on Location Sound Recording; boom micing, wiring actors with body mics, plant mics, room tone capture and field recording. The second half will focus on Post Production Audio Techniques; Dialogue Editing, Foley, Dialogue Replacement and Sound Effects Sweetening.