Performance Studies (PERF-GT)

Majors Only:This course will introduce incoming Master’s students to some of the concepts, terms, and theoretical genealogies that they can expect to encounter in Performance Studies. What makes performance studies performance studies, and why do it? In considering this question we will consider the specificity of performance as an object of study, a mode of inquiry, a practice of self-hood and sociality, and as an aesthetic practice; we will also focus on the specific challenges and potentialities in writing about/as performance.

To be taken in the student's final semester in the M.A. program. This course will run primarily as a workshop in which current M.A. students will begin with a paper or performance piece begun in a previous PS course and develop that project into a fuller research project. Part of the time will be spent in small (TA-led) workshops; the rest of the time will be spent en masse, where we will discuss strategies for revision, publication, and/or production. The course culminates in a symposium in which graduating M.A. students present an excerpt or précis of that research to the department.

Topics change each term: Please refer to department course website for current description when offered. https://tisch.nyu.edu/performance-studies/courses/graduate-course-descriptions

Performance Studies teaches us to read anew, and again, any text we think we know. This seminar offers the opportunity to collectively experiment with how we approach, take in, and then incorporate a reading (as an activity and object) into our written work. Considering the theoretical, ethical and practical challenges presented by different modes of analysis, students will develop skills related to archival research, talking to people, documentation, and analysis of live performance, and the analysis of documents of various kinds, including ephemeral ones. Together we will consider writing strategies that best transmit different kinds of projects. Work for the course will include various exercises designed for the long view: written responses to the weekly readings, development of exam areas, an early formulation of dissertation projects, and ideas for future teaching.

This course operates as a workshop, emphasizing problems of research, writing, and editing as they apply to the doctoral dissertation. Each student will draft their dissertation proposal in preparation for Dissertation Colloquia at the end of that semester, during which their dissertation committees will evaluate their proposals.

In this course, students will develop performance studies methodologies based on interdisciplinary research paradigms (movement analysis, ethnomusicology, ethnography, history, oral history, orature, visual studies, ethnomethodology, among others) and the close reading and analysis of exemplary studies. Students will also consider the conceptualization and design of research projects in the context of theoretical and ethical issues and in relation to particular research methods and writing strategies, developing practical skills related to archival and library research; ethnographic approaches, including participant observation and interviewing; documentation and analysis of live performance; and analysis of documents of various kinds, including visual material. Readings address the history of ideas, practices, and images of objectivity, as well as of reflexive and interpretive approaches, relationships between science and art, and research perspectives arising from minoritarian and postcolonial experiences. Assignments include weekly readings, written responses to the readings, and exercises.