PHD Program

The PhD in Performance Studies is a genuinely interdisciplinary degree combining academic work that is theoretically engaged with performance practice as research. The department is highly supportive of PhD students, who are encouraged to build personal research areas with active mentoring and within a strong graduate culture.

There are two strands to the PhD: one is focused on criticism, history and theory, and the other on practice as research. 'Practice as research' is a term that is coming into use around the academic world to describe challenging graduate, postgraduate and postdoctoral research into various areas of practice in acting, directing, choreography, dance and design, for the stage, film, television and electronic media. The PhD criticism, history and theory strand has long roots in the department and continues to be the most popular option, but the new strand is developing and complementing its partner in exciting and energizing ways.

Students coming into the program will work with outstanding faculty whose areas of expertise are concentrated in twentieth and twenty-first century performance studies. There is an active research culture working in parallel with professional engagements in a wide variety of performance media. Faculty research interests focus on aesthetic, social and political approaches to performance, with individual emphases on activism and carnival, race and ethnicity, feminism and postcolonialism, and acting/ body/ voice. Faculty members are actively engaged in directing television shows and films, in professional directing and choreography on the international and national stage, and in designing sets, lighting and costume for film, theatre, dance, opera and television.

Topical areas are wide-ranging and include political theatre, contemporary Shakespeare, Asian physical culture and dance, Latino and Hispanic drama, British theatre and Canadian performance art. The degree also offers the possibility of working with various 'Designated Emphases' in Critical Theory, Native American Studies, and an exceptionally broad category of Performance Studies that includes many other departments, from Art and Music to Communication Studies and Exercise Science. Any of these critical, topical and/or practice as research areas are open to development at the doctoral level.