Introduction

Program Description

Graduate Faculty

Class Schedule

Theater 200 - Graduate Colloquium: The second semester of the Graduate Colloquium is required for first and second year graduate students in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. We will focus on professional development such as conferences, CVs, abstracts, and writing for publication but also focus intently on drafting of first and second year reviews. The seminar will in large part function as a writing workshop, where individual projects will be shared with the other students in the class for commentary and constructive critique. In addition to required reviews, first year students will develop and complete a conference paper; second year students will prepare a paper for publication.

Instructor: Peter Glazer, Mon 12-2, 30 Dwinelle, 1-2 units, CCN 88261.

Theater 202 - Methodologies and Approaches to Theater in Context - Field Methods in Performance Studies: This course will explore both the practice and theory of field methods for research in performance studies, including hands-on training in specific techniques such as interviews, performance observation, oral history, ethnography, participant-observation, and co-performer witnessing. The course will introduce students to central theoretical and ethical issues involved in "lived" research and the technical challenges of documenting performance with its inherent and vexing ephemerality. Readings will include a range of exemplary ethnographies in performance studies and related disciplines.

Instructor: Catherine Cole, Tu 2-5, 30 Dwinelle, 4 units, CCN 88264.

Theater 203 - Theatrical Texts, Spaces, and Bodies: Performance Works: Lab Run: This seminar is constructed around the making of performance, and conceived as a laboratory for performance practice. The course is also a forum for exploring the relationship between live performance and the critical discourses of Performance Studies. Required for first year graduate students in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and open to other graduate students in the department, the primary focus of the course is Lab Run , a series of pieces created, directed, and/or performed by members of the class. Lab Run will receive four public performances in Room 7, April 3 - 5, the 10th week of the semester. Preliminary conceptual work on individual or collaborative projects should begin late in the fall semester. At the beginning of the course, students will share ideas and materials with the rest of the class to help formalize their pieces. As projects solidify, the class will determine a structure for the entire evening. Auditions will be held early in the semester for works requiring outside actors, and rehearsal spaces will then be made available for students to rehearse and continue to develop their performances. Once rehearsals begin, production meetings will be held on a weekly basis with stage managers and other support staff, and class meetings will only be held every other week. After Lab Run is complete, regular class meetings will resume, and we will study selected essays and visual materials to place our work in a larger critical context.

Instructor: Peter Glazer, Mon 3-6, 30 Dwinelle, 4 units, CCN 88267.

Theater 266 - Special Topics - Feeling Global: Performing Race in Transnational Contexts: In recent years, the definition of race as a function of national identity and exclusion has undergone intense scrutiny. The conventional wisdom that the dynamics of race are locatable within stable national borders no longer seems as certain as it once was. Increasingly, race studies scholars working in and on a variety of national contexts have stressed the transnational nature of racial formation, both in systems of racial exclusion and in resistance to racial oppression. This course will combine historical and theoretical material on the nature of racial formation-as both a system of national formation based on exclusion, and as a way of inventing cross-national systems of affiliation that might help defend those excluded from their national political economies on the basis of race. Although the course will focus primarily on a U.S. context, that emphasis will not remain constant. Instead, as we investigate how national boundaries like that of the U.S. are under constant pressure by what historian Frank Guridy calls "diaspora in action," we will follow our subjects as they move between nations and nationalisms. In order to examine the dynamics of transnational racial formation, we will scrutinize the role performance has played in the life of diaspora. Centrally, how have actors, singers, and political leaders engaged, limited, or augmented systems of transnational scattering and affiliation through the live, affective orders of performance? Does performance create a vector of transnationalism that differs from that of other forms of cultural production? If so, how? 

Instructor: Shannon Steen, Wed 2-5, 30 Dwinelle, 4 units, CCN 88270.

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Policy on Undergraduate Participation
in Graduate Courses:
Graduate courses in Performance Studies are open to all qualified graduate students; in some   circumstances, however, unusually well-qualified undergraduate students may be eligible to take graduate seminars offered through the Graduate Group in Performance Studies.   Undergraduate students wishing to register for a graduate seminar must meet all of the following conditions:

For TDPS Majors:

a. have already taken three of the required PS upper division courses, with a gpa of at least 3.6 average in those courses

b. have the prior written approval of the instructor, acknowledging that s/he has discussed the course with you, and has been informed of your background and gpa

c. understand that the graduate seminar must be taken as an "elective" and will not be counted toward one of the four performance-studies areas of the undergraduate major.

For non-TDPS Majors:

a. have a gpa of at least 3.6 average in relevant upper-division coursework in another department (i.e., formal courses in literature, history, theory, or cultural studies), and have taken at least three upper-division courses of this kind in the home department(s). (i.e., the student does not have to have taken 3 of the TDPS courses, but should have at least 3 relevant upper-division classes in his/her relevant field of study)

b. have the prior written approval of the instructor, acknowledging that s/he has discussed the course with the student, and has been informed of his/her background and gpa

It is understood that in approaching an instructor for permission, the student will make his/her qualifications for the course (i.e. prior background and gpa) known to the instructor; students who have instructor approval but do not meet the gpa/background requirement will not be permitted in the course.

It is understood that the required classes for the Ph.D. in Performance Studies (201, 202, 203) are normally closed to undergraduate students, as these courses play a crucial role both in professionalizing Ph.D. students and in providing them with a common critical vocabulary.