Nov 12, 2024  
USC Catalogue 2024-2025 
    
USC Catalogue 2024-2025

Performance Studies Graduate Certificate


Return to {$returnto_text} Return to: Programs by School

This 16-unit graduate certificate program is meant to complement PhD and MA studies in related areas such as English, Comparative Literature, Art History, Cinema Studies, etc., by affording students interested in live and time-based art media, courses and a specialization based on studying these modes of creative work.

With a focus on the deep history of discourse and media relating to performance, screen imagery, embodied and visual art work, the program intersects with ethnic studies, gender/sexuality studies, cinema studies, drama, dance and broad concerns addressing how bodies in performance or in visual images construct or resist identifications.

Application for the certificate is open to all USC graduate students in fall and spring semesters, and must be submitted by the end of the first year of a graduate program. The minimum GPA requirement is 3.0.

Required Courses (8 units)


The required core courses are intended to supply both a horizontal and a vertical understanding of performance studies. Emphasis will be placed on the student putting her or his practice (whether artistic or scholarly) in the context of both an overview of the field and deep examples of performance practices, approached either through a scholarly framework or via hands on and practice-based strategies.

CRIT 500  provides a broad historical chronology and an understanding of the histories of theory and practice; CRIT 560  and CRIT 570  provide deep analysis and hands-on research skills.

Note: If desired a student may take both CRIT 560  and CRIT 570  with the second counting as a Roski elective.

Electives (8 units)


Electives include courses in Roski and those ratified courses by affiliate faculty beyond Roski, or courses approved by the Graduate Program Director. Participating programs currently include Cinema Studies, Architecture, Dramatic Arts, Dance, Music, American Studies and Ethnicity, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, Communication, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Art History, English and Philosophy. All these courses are 4 units unless otherwise noted. In all cases students must get approval from the Graduate Program Director based on current content of the class.

Some suggested elective courses include the following:

Return to {$returnto_text} Return to: Programs by School