Cornell University

Graduate SchoolGraduate School

Graduate SchoolFields of Study

Performing and Media Arts

Field Description

The graduate program in Performing and Media Arts focuses on research, writing, pedagogy, and praxis in order to prepare students for careers as scholars and teachers. Students may work with a strong emphasis in either theatre and performance studies or cinema and media studies, and they are also encouraged to find novel, fresh, and rigorous ways to produce work at interdisciplinary sites of contact between theatre and performance studies on the one hand and cinema and media studies on the other hand.

 A student’s Special Committee is made up of three faculty members, two PMA field faculty members representing the student's major area (theater and performance studies, cinema and media studies, or theatre theory and aesthetics) and a third, from outside the PMA field faculty, representing the student's minor area. Students whose interdisciplinary interests encompass more areas of study may add a fourth committee member. Possible areas include (but are not limited to): Directing or Acting Pedagogy; Film and Video Studies; Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies; LGBT Studies, Africana Studies; Anthropology; Asian Studies; English, German; Music; Near Eastern Studies; and American Studies. 

The field of Performing and Media Arts requires each graduate student to consult with their special committee to decide what study, if any, in a second language is most appropriate for a student’s graduate program and scholarly interests. Some special committees will require graduate students to demonstrate competency and/or fluency in one or two languages. When applicable, a graduate student may be asked to demonstrate competence and/or fluency in specific languages by presenting their undergraduate record, taking additional courses in a specific language and literature, or translating and discussing documents related to the student’s work.

Research facilities:

Cornell University maintains an extensive library system for scholarly research, with excellent holdings in areas relevant to the field. Olin and Kroch Libraries are the main research centers for the humanities; they house several special collections of particular interest to our program, including the world’s largest Hip Hop Collection, extensive materials on and by George Bernard Shaw and George Jean Nathan, and the Rose Golden Archive of New Media. Students work closely with Cornell's Society for the Humanities and The School for Criticism and Theory, interdisciplinary centers of intellectual exchange that draw scholars and artists from across the globe.

 
 

Contact Information

Website: http://pma.cornell.edu/
Email: dm246@cornell.edu
Phone: 607 254-2757

Graduate Field Assistant
223 Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, 430 College Avenue
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY  14853

Data and Statistics

Field Manual

Subject and Degrees

Performing and Media Arts

Concentrations by Subject

Performing and Media Arts

  • cinema and media studies
  • theatre and performance studies
  • theatre practice (acting or directing) (minor)
  • theatre theory and aesthetics

Faculty

Juan Manuel Aldape Munoz

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: theatre and performance studies; theatre theory and aesthetics
  • Research Interests: performance studies, illegality and citizenship, borderlands studies, critical ethnography, and (Afro)Latinx/Latin American cultural production

Christine Bacareza Balance

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies; theatre and performance studies
  • Research Interests: performance studies, popular music studies, transnational Asian American studies, critical Filipino/Filipino American studies, sound studies

Erik Christopher Born

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: German cinema (esp. silent film); media history and theory

Jodi A. Byrd

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: Indigenous critical theory, video game studies, Indigenous feminisms and queer studies

Andrew Campana

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: Japanese literature, film and media, digital media and game studies, disability studies

Debra Ann Castillo

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: theatre and performance studies; theatre practice (acting or directing); theatre theory and aesthetics
  • Research Interests: drama and the theatre; theatre theory and aesthetics; theatre history; theatre practice

Naminata Diabate

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: postcolonial theories, feminist and queer theories, film studies, body and performance theory, African, African-American and Afro-Hispanic literatures

David M Feldshuh

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: theatre and performance studies; theatre practice (acting or directing)
  • Research Interests: directing; acting, speaking in public

Arnika Fuhrmann

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies; theatre and performance studies
  • Research Interests: performing arts in Asia; performance theory; and transmedia art in Asia

J. Ellen Gainor

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: theatre and performance studies; theatre practice (acting or directing); theatre theory and aesthetics
  • Research Interests: drama and the theater; British and American dramatic literature; feminism, gender, and theater; theater history

Mitchell D Greenberg

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: theatre and performance studies; theatre theory and aesthetics

Sabine Haenni

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: American, European, Transnational cinemas, film history, silent film, migration, urbanism/geography/architecture, cinema, media and the public sphere, film festivals

Ellis Hanson

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies; theatre and performance studies; theatre theory and aesthetics
  • Research Interests: drama and the theatre; theatre theory and aesthetics; theatre history; theatre practice

Karen Jaime

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: theatre and performance studies; theatre theory and aesthetics
  • Research Interests: performance studies/theories; latina/o performance, film and culture

Patricia M. Keller

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: cinema, photography, literature, technologies, aesthetics of Fascism, landscape, poetics, experimental media and film

Bruce A Levitt

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: theatre and performance studies; theatre practice (acting or directing); theatre theory and aesthetics
  • Research Interests: directing; dramatic literature, prison studies

Philip A. Lorenz

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: theatre and performance studies; theatre theory and aesthetics
  • Research Interests: drama and the theatre; theatre theory and aesthetics; theatre history

Beth Milles

  • Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: theatre practice (acting or directing)
  • Research Interests: directing; devising; public performance; new works; improvisation/discovery; street performance/clown/audience interaction; contemporization of classical work

Andrew Moisey

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: photography, documentary media, scientific illustration, film aesthetics

Timothy Conway Murray

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies; theatre and performance studies; theatre theory and aesthetics
  • Research Interests: dramatic theory; comparative drama; Renaissance, media studies

Mendi Lewis Obadike

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies; theatre and performance studies; theatre practice (acting or directing)
  • Research Interests: Sound Art, Sound Studies, Media Art, Performance, Poetry, and African American Studies

Jeffrey P. Palmer

  • Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: film production, documentary, media studies, American Indian & Indigenous Studies

Judith Ann Peraino

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: theatre and performance studies
  • Research Interests: music and performance

Natasha Raheja

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: Visual Anthropology, Legal Anthropology

Jolene K. Rickard

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: Art, Indigeneity, Colonial/Decolonial, Narrative Gender, Ecocritism, Materiality, Indigenous Media

Danielle Russo

  • Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: theatre and performance studies; theatre theory and aesthetics
  • Research Interests: practice and pedagogy for choreography in site-specific to immersive dance theater, dance and performance as social practice, intermedia dance and performance, improvisational strategies, critical ethnography, the body archive and decolonizing the dance canon, history of art activism, feminist theory, curatorial practices in dance and performance

Nicholas G. Salvato

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies; theatre and performance studies; theatre theory and aesthetics
  • Research Interests: 20th-century theater and culture; American drama; modernism; feminist and queer performance theory and practice

Samantha Noelle Sheppard

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: cinema and media studies

Deborah Ann Starr

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: Modern Arabic and Hebrew Literature; Cinema and Media Studies; Jewish Studies

Irina Raquel Troconis Gonzalez

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: theatre and performance studies
  • Research Interests: Latin American literature and culture, digital humanities, performance studies, memory studies, border studies, literature and exile, virtual realities, cultural translation, Venezuelan studies, affect theory, material history.

Parisa Vaziri

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: Cinema and Media Studies, Iranian Studies, Black Studies, Postcolonial theory

Kristen J Warner

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: cinema and media studies
  • Research Interests: Cinema and Media Studies; Media Industries; Racial Representation; Film Festivals Research

Sara L. Warner

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Performing and Media Arts: theatre and performance studies; theatre theory and aesthetics
  • Research Interests: theater history; performance studies; theories of gender and sexuality; feminist and queer performance; theater and social change