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Department: Theatre and Performance

Executive Officer: Professor James Wilson

The Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10016

Email: Theatre@gc.cuny.edu

https://www.gc.cuny.edu/theatre-and-performance

FACULTY

William Boddy, Sarah Brady, Jonathan Buchsbaum, Peter Eckersall, Mira Felner, Bertha Ferdman, Racquel Gates, David Gerstner, Alison Griffiths, Frank Hentschker, Amy Herzog, Jonathan Kalb, Erika Lin, Ivone Margulies, Paula Massood, Joseph McElhaney, Edward Miller, Hillary Miller, Claudia Orenstein, Melinda Powers, Joyce Rheuban, Annette Saddik, Maurya Wickstrom, James Wilson, Elizabeth Wollman

THE PROGRAM

The Ph.D. Program in Theatre and Performance at The Graduate Center is designed to develop scholars with a broad theoretical background and demonstrated research ability in dramatic theory and criticism, dramatic structure, and history of theatre and performance. Advanced work is offered in theatre and performance of the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Arab world. Although the program’s emphasis is on primary research, an attempt is made, whenever possible, to bridge the gap between theatre as an area of knowledge and as a performing art and to form an alliance of understanding between the scholar and the practitioner.

The program’s faculty, consisting of distinguished scholars as well as critics of the professional theatre, is very much concerned with the professional opportunities and careers available to its students. Students are encouraged to take full advantage of the resources of the Graduate Center as well as to explore avenues of interdisciplinary cooperation.

Doctoral courses include seminars in movements (such as romanticism, realism, or the avant-garde), themes (such as theatre and science or metatheatre), genres (such as melodrama, musical theatre, or opera), theory (such as gender, postcolonial, reception, or sociology of culture), comparative drama (such as medieval, Middle Eastern, or Golden Age Spanish/colonial Latin American), theatre history and production (such as 18th-century British drama and theatre, history of scenic design, or studies in the current season), and film (such as African-American film, holocaust film, or the cyborg and technologies of imagination).

Advanced doctoral seminars may also be taken at New York University and Columbia University through the Interuniversity Doctoral Consortium.

Directed independent study and externships in theatre for credit are also available.

Resources for Training and Research

New York City, with its professional theatre specialists, institutions, and productions, its library and museum facilities, its archives and private collections, is an unusually rich resource. Students have easy access to such special research facilities as the theatre, film, music, and dance collections of Lincoln Center, the facilities of the Players’ Club, the International Theatre Institute Archives, the numerous art galleries and museums, the central research facilities of the New York Public Library, and the many other cultural activities that New York City has to offer.

In addition to these general resources, the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, located at the Graduate Center, embraces disciplinary and interdisciplinary projects in theatre, dance, and film and serves as the research and communications center of the Ph.D Program in Theatre and Performance. The Segal Center incorporates and replaces the Center for Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CASTA).

En-route M.A.

Upon completing 45 credits with an average grade of B, passing the First Examination, and satisfactorily completing a major research paper, the student may apply for an M.A. degree. The degree is awarded formally by one of the participating senior CUNY colleges.