Fall 2024 Graduate Courses

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Check for registration holds. All holds must be resolved and removed in order to enroll in classes for the fall semester. Go to the Student Center in Albert and look at the “Holds” section on the right side of the page.

Update your contact information. Go to the Student Center in Albert and click on "Personal Information." All students are required to have an "NYU Emergency Alert" cellular phone number and emergency contact information to register for Fall 2024.

NON-MAJORS: Due to the one-year format of the Master’s program most of our classes are restricted to majors only. If you are interested in registering for a class you must submit an External Student Registration form. If space becomes available you will be contacted with registration instructions: Click here for External Form

Last updated:7/22/24

Fall 2024 Course Offerings

Introduction to Performance Studies | A. Pellegrini

PERF-GT 1000.001, (Albert #15460), Tuesdays, 3:45pm to 5:30pm

4 points, 721 Broadway, 6th floor, Classroom 612

Recitation Sections:

PERF-GT 1000.002 (9498) - Thursdays, 3:00pm- 4:15pm, Room 611

PERF-GT 1000.003 (9502) - Thursdays, 3:00pm- 4:15pm, Room 612

PERF-GT 1000.004 (15461) - Thursdays, 3:00pm- 4:15pm, Room 613

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.  

Performance of Everyday Life | B. Browning

PERF-GT 1040.001, (Albert #15462), Mondays, 3:30pm to 6:30pm

4 points, 721 Broadway, 6th floor, Classroom 613

This course focuses on “everyday” versions of performance (as opposed to theatrical or formal performances). Drawing from philosophy, anthropology, sociology, affect studies, feminist and queer theory, the course invites students to view seemingly non-theatrical social interaction as performance, and to consider the significance of the seemingly “normal” and inconsequential nature of such performances. What happens when what is “second nature” becomes the focus of our attention? The course will also place particular emphasis on writing as a mode of illuminating and interrogating the “everyday”, as well as considering it as performance practice in and of itself.

Special Topics: Partnering: Black Ecological Intimacies | A. Musser

PERF-GT 2122.001, (Albert #15463), Mondays, 5:00pm to 8:00pm

4 points, 721 Broadway, 6th floor, Classroom 612

In herbalism, one is said to “partner” with plants. This word is meant to emphasize the non-extractive nature of collaboration and the processes of attunement, intimacy, and respect that structure the practice of working with plants. This course uses the framework of “partnering” to think about different ways that theorists in Black studies have engaged with the ideas of entanglement, materiality, and spirituality. We will consider the porosity of the body, relations with empire, questions of the ecological, toxicity, and survival. How might we reframe intimacy when we re-examine the boundaries between people and place? 

Latinx Performance and Immigration Law | M. Castañeda

PERF-GT 2409.001, (Albert #21361), Tuesdays, 9:30am to 12:30pm

4 points, 721 Broadway, 6th floor, Classroom 613

This course investigates the states of social marginalization produced by U.S. Immigration Law and the many ways that Latinx performers resist that condition. Analyzing performances in various media--theater, live art, music, and dance--this course examines how Latinx performers reshape national belonging, resist criminalization, and advance decolonial visions. The course will be structured chronologically, tracing immigration law from the Chinese Exclusion Acts of the late 19th century to the "crimmigration policies" of the present day. Our study of these historical landmarks will be elaborated with theoretical readings on the performative dynamics of law, sovereignty, and the border. Each week, we juxtapose a moment in legal history with a performance practice or performance maker. Such makers may include Cherríe Moraga, Lila Downs, Orlando Hernandez, Coco Fusco, the Nuyorican Poets, Teatro Luna, and many more.

Topics in Dance Studies: Movement Theory | A. Lepecki

PERF-GT 2504.001, (Albert #9512), Wednesdays, 9:30am to 12:30pm

4 points, 721 Broadway, 6th floor, Classroom 612

The premise of this course is that “movement” is a bio-techno-political substance. We will look into how some key political philosophers, choreographers, and dancers have developed and enacted theories of movement and embodiment that address compositional practices and social-political problems binding movement and the political. Some of those problems include: command and obedience; embodiment and discipline; movement and freedom; ephemerality and the political ontology of dance. A particular focus will be given to how efforts to capture and control movement by contemporary as well as historical systems of “power/knowledge” illuminate the choreographic production of movement theories. 

Hip Hop Aesthetics | S. Smalls

PERF-GT 2960.001, (Albert #24155), Mondays, 3:40pm to 7:15pm

4 points, 1 Washington Place, Room 1227

This course will center around performances, exhibits, and objects across NYC related to the celebration of hip hop at post-50. We will also read and watch material that contextualized hip hop culture and performance in a broader Black Studies context. Possible site visits: Universal Hip Hop Museum, ongoing art exhibits; films: Wild Style (1983); “Hip Hop at 50” Instagram page; books: Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip Hop; Dark Matter in Breaking Cyphers; Graffiti Grrlz.

Race and Speculation | S. Smalls

PERF-GT 2312.001, (Albert #24156), Thursdays, 10:30am to 2:05pm

4 points, 181 Mercer, Room 565

This graduate-level course takes seriously the work that science fiction and speculative works do in relation to constructions of gender and sexuality, race, and imaginary worlds and temporalities. This course considers how dystopian science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative categories render race and gender in the afterlife of structured society. Are race and gender metrics that register after civilization has been destroyed or radically altered? We consider such questions as: Who gets to lead in dystopian society? Who gets to have family and kinship and how are those portrayed? How is gender racialized and race gendered in post-apocalyptic worlds? And finally, can dystopic future renderings aid in undoing long-standing structural oppressions?

 

The class will focus on a series of objects and performances across genres, including, graphic novels, literary novels, and visual culture (film, tv, art).

Possible sites of inquiry: NYC Comic Con Festival, Forbidden Planet Comics; authors:  Octavia E. Butler, Marjorie Liu; Richard Dyer; films: Train to Busan (2016), Metropolis (1927), His House (2020)

Advanced Readings in Performance Studies | F. Moten

PERF-GT 2201.001, (Albert #9508), Wednesdays, 1:00pm to 4:00pm

4 points, 721 Broadway, 6th floor, Classroom 611

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.  We will consider 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.

Dissertation Proposal | D. Taylor

PERF-GT 2301.001, (Albert #15465), Tuesdays, 9:15am to 12:15pm

Non credit bearing course (0 points), 721 Broadway, 6th floor, Classroom 611

Emphasis on problems of research, writing, and editing as they apply to the doctoral dissertation.  Each student prepares a dissertation proposal as a class project and presents it at the end of the semester colloquium.