Overview
Our faculty and students are performers and scholars, directors and writers, researchers and artists. Our courses focus on both theory and practice, from the freshman introductory course The Analysis and Performance of Literature to sophomore level courses such as Adapting Narrative for Group Performance and Performance and Culture, and continuing through the wide range of our junior/senior/graduate courses, such as Presentational Aesthetics, Field Methods in Performances Studies, Studies in Gender and Performance, Performance Art, Shakespeare: Performance and Criticism; and our advanced graduate seminars such as Critical/Performance Ethnography and Seminar in Post-Modern Performance.
Photo 1 courtesy Liono Setiowijoso
Performance Studies has at its center the written and spoken word, gesture and image, text and body, performance and analysis. Historically grounded in the oral interpretation of poetry and fiction, Performance Studies as an evolving practice seeks to engage performance at every front, to open and broaden the definition of performance and the texts that prompt them, to explore performance practices and test the ground on which they rest.
The Department of Performance Studies engages performance as both an object of study-something to be documented, analyzed, theorized-and as a living art form -something to be experienced, practiced, enacted. The unique and defining characteristic of the department is its commitment to both theory and practice, the analytical and the artistic.
Departmental performances open up literary texts, they question cultural assumptions, they explore identities and political positions. They are also fully realized productions, often incorporating dance, video, original music, and offering some of the most innovative and exciting theatre on the Northwestern campus.
Departmental research is not a thing apart from performance work. Our scholarship embraces performance, draws upon it and is itself interwoven with performance.
Performance studies is by nature interdisciplinary. Within the department are faculty with joint appointments in African-American Studies, anthropology, English, gender studies, musicology, theatre. The department's relationship with the Department of Theatre is particularly strong; there is collaboration on productions, joint use of performance spaces, a sense of community among our students, and newly developed courses that are team-taught by faculty from our two departments.
The Department of Performance Studies is committed to intellectual inquiry and artistic excellence. It is committed to the production of research that is vital and vibrant, and to cutting edge performance that stimulates. The department is committed to the education of its students and to continued movement and growth.
Photo 4 courtesy Redmoon Theatre
