Overview

The Graduate Group in Performance Studies at UC Berkeley provides an interdisciplinary and individually crafted curriculum directed at advanced studies in the literatures, performances, cultural contexts, and theories of performance throughout the world. Based in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, the PhD program in Performance Studies takes advantage of Berkeley’s distinguished history in the field of drama and theater studies and opens out to a wider interrogation of the disciplines and methodologies of performance studies. The program is administered by the Graduate Group in Performance Studies, composed of faculty from a wide range of related departments. Students in the Performance Studies PhD program conduct research in a diverse array of interdisciplinary methodologies, on projects spanning the fields of theater, dance, and performance studies.

Undergraduate Program

The group does not offer an undergraduate program in Performance Studies. However, the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies offers a major and minor in Dance and Perfomance Studies and Theater and Performance Studies.

Graduate Program

Performance Studies: PhD

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Courses

Performance Studies

Faculty and Instructors

Faculty

Brandi N. Catanese, Associate Professor. African-American Drama and Theater.
Research Profile

Abigail T. De Kosnik, Associate Professor. Technology and Performance, Artistic Appropriation and Remix, Ethnicity, Gender, and Digital Culture, Cultural Studies, Subcultures and Fan Cultures, Marxism and Post-Structuralism .
Research Profile

Julia Fawcett, Associate Professor. Restoration and 18th Century Theater and Performance, Performance Historiography, Intersections Between Literature and Performance, Autobiographical Performance, Urban Space, Celebrity, Gender, and Disability Studies .

Peter Glazer, Associate Professor. Directing, Adaptation, Performance Theory, 20th century American Theater, Commemorative Performance .

+ Mark Griffith, Professor. Classical drama and performance, Greek and Latin literature.
Research Profile

Shannon Jackson, Professor and Associate Vice Chancellor for Arts + Design. Performance Studies, Contemporary theater, American cultural history and Performance Historiography, Adaptation.
Research Profile

Sansan Kwan, Associate Professor. Critical Dance Studies, Transnational Asian American Studies, Cultural Geography, Theories of Space and Kinesthesia, Interculturalism, Modern Dance, Ballet, and Yoga.
Research Profile

Angela Marino, Associate Professor. Politics and performance in the Americas, Latin/o American performance and dramatic literature, popular fiesta and carnival theory.
Research Profile

Laura E. Perez, Professor. Post-1965 U S Latina/o Visual, Performance, and Literary Arts, U S women of color feminist, queer thought, cultural studies, decolonial aesthetics and decolonial spiritualities .
Research Profile

Juana Maria Rodriguez, Professor. Queer Theory and Cultural Activism, Latin@ Popular Cultures, Performance Studies, Critical Race Theory, Sex and Sexuality Studies, Technology and Media Arts .

Miryam Sas, Professor. 20th century poetry, Japanese Experimental Theater and Dance, Memory and Trauma, Mass Media and Cultural Studies, Film.
Research Profile

Mary Ann Smart, Professor. Opera, music and gender, music and politics, historical acting and staging, live performance and technology in contemporary opera.
Research Profile

Shannon Steen, Associate Professor. Performance and critical race studies (especially the intersection of African and Asian American histories), American Studies, globalization and American urban development, and post/modernisms.

Minh-Ha Trinh, Professor. Feminist Theory, Film Theory and production, Comparative Literary and Art Theory, Cultural Politics, Third World Arts and Politics.
Research Profile

Sophie Volpp, Associate Professor. Classical Chinese performance, Chinese literature of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, history of performance, gender theory, the history of sexuality, and the representation of material culture .
Research Profile

Alexei Yurchak, Associate Professor. Theories of discourse, power and performance, the politics of aesthetics, irony and ideology, contemporary media, Russian informal art, Soviet state socialism and postsocialism, cities and urban space.
Research Profile

Affiliated Faculty

Paola Bacchetta, Associate Professor. Transnational feminist and queer theories, inseparabilities of gender, sexuality, 'race'-racism, postcoloniality, Hindu nationalism, global political conflict, feminist and queer of color, and right wing movement discourses and practices in the U S , India and France, transnational feminist and queer alliances.
Research Profile

Charles L. Briggs, Professor. Performing the diseased body and its therapeutic intervention, biomedical and vernacular, theorizing relations between narrative and violence, mediatization and its reified objects, creating modern subjects by creating their 'traditional' Others.

Julia Q. Bryan-Wilson, Professor. Theories of artistic labor, feminist and queer theory, performance, production/fabrication, craft histories, photography, video, visual culture of the nuclear age, and collaborative practices.
Research Profile

Judith Butler, Professor. Performance and identity, gender and sexual politics, human rights, anti-war politics, messianic gestures in Kafka and Benjamin, philosophical fictions in Freud’s work, gender in translation.
Research Profile

Nadia Ellis, Associate Professor. African diasporic, Caribbean, and postcolonial literatures and cultures.

Joe Goode, Professor. Choreography and interdisciplinary performance.

Jocelyne Guilbault, Professor. Ethnomusicology, Caribbean Musics (popular and traditional), Creolization, Power, Cultural Politics, Nationalism, Diaspora.
Research Profile

Andrew Jones, Professor. Children’s Literature, Chinese Popular Music, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Literary Translation, Media Technology, Modern Chinese Fiction, Sonic Culture.
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Anton Kaes, Professor. Modern German theater (Expressionism, Brecht, and the theater of the 1920s), postmodernist theater and film, the relationship between theater and film, theory of film, Critical Theory, and Cultural Studies.
Research Profile

John Lie, Professor. Social theory, political economy, Korean diaspora.
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Dan O'Neill, Associate Professor. Meiji print culture and literature, Taishô aesthetics, postwar intellectual history and popular culture, the novel in comparative perspective, global modernisms, and critical theory (particularly in relation to affect and aesthetics).

Beth Piatote, Associate Professor. Native American literature, history, law and culture, Native American/Aboriginal literature and federal Indian law in the United States and Canada, American literature and cultural studies, Ni:mi:pu: (Nez Perce) language and literature.
Research Profile

+ Susan Schweik, Professor. Disability Studies, Poetry, 20th-Century American Literature, 19th-Century American literature, Cultural Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Race and Ethnicity.
Research Profile

Darieck Scott, Associate Professor. 20th and 21st century African American literature, creative writing, queer theory, and LGBTQ studies, race, gender and sexuality in fantasy, science fiction, and comic books.