Performance Studies Departments worldwide

New York University
New York University is home to the world’s first performance studies program. The department curriculum is rooted in theatre, the social sciences, feminist and queer studies, postcolonial studies, poststructuralism, and experimental performance.

http://performance.tisch.nyu.edu/page/home

Northwestern University
Northwestern University ’s department is, alongside NYU, one of the premier performance studies departments in the world. Its curriculum is rooted in oral interpretation, communications, speech-act theory, and ethnography.

http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/performancestudies/

University of Wales , Aberystwyth
Performance Studies at the University of Wales focuses on the live arts — dance, theatre, performance art, ritual and popular entertainment — and employs performance as an optic through which to examine a variety of representational practices, from theatre and dance to public ceremonies, virtual performance, and the performance of everyday life.

http://www.aber.ac.uk/~psswww/flash_nav1.htm

Brown University
Brown University positions its department at the intersection of theatre and a variety of performance genres, as well as "performativity" and "performance in everyday life” in global, historical, practical, and theoretical perspective. It teaches performance studies as both a methodology of inquiry applicable to theatre studies and as a subject matter of "performance" beyond the confines of "theatre proper."

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Theatre_Speech_Dance/

Queen Mary College, University of London
Performance studies at Queen Mary exists effectively within a drama department within the School of English and Drama. While it does not offer an explicit performance studies degree, it integrates performance studies across its undergraduate, MA, and PhD curriculum.

http://www.english.qmul.ac.uk/

National University of Singapore
At the National University of Singapore, performance studies is taught within the Theatre Studies section of the Department of English Language and Literature, and focuses largely on culture in Southeast Asia. It engages methodological perspectives of performance studies with regard to anthropology, ethnography, critical theory, and aesthetics.

http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/ell/

De Montfort University
Performance studies at DeMontfort University is taught through the School of English, Performance, and Historical Studies and draws on a range of media, from live performance to film and video, and virtual reality. The teaching staff consists of academics and performance practitioners whose specialities include gender and performance, physical performance, new writing, mixed-media performance, subversive performance, and performance art.

http://www.dmu.ac.uk/faculties/humanities/pa/patext.jsp?ComponentID=6695&SourcePageID=6704

Arizona State University West
Arizona State University West offers a concentration in performance studies through the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance. The curriculum is interdisciplinary and covers performance, theatre, dance, technology, film as well as intercultural studies with an emphasis on twentieth century arts and culture.

http://www.west.asu.edu/iap/

University of Limerick
The University of Limerick’s Irish World Music Centre is progressing toward a performance-based doctoral program, and it is about to embark on the development of a new undergraduate program in voice and movement, to be grounded in performance studies.

http://www.ul.ie/~iwmc/flash/iwmcflash.htm

Georgetown University
Georgetown University ’s Program in Performing Arts is developing an undergraduate major in theatre and performance studies, and it has plans to introduce a graduate program in the coming years. Its curriculum includes courses in adaptation and performance of literature, performance art, performance ethnography, and intercultural and political performance.

http://performingarts.georgetown.edu/

University of California-Berkeley
Performance studies at UC-Berkeley is an interdisciplinary and individually crafted curriculum directed at advanced studies in the literatures, performances, cultural contexts, and theories of theater and performance throughout the world. Its Ph.D. program in Performance Studies is based in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, and includes courses in transnational/intercultural critique, historiography/historical research, staging identity/identification, and performance theory.

http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/theater/GraduateProgram/index-grad.html

Concordia University, Montreal
The Theatre Department at Concordia University is instituting an undergraduate minor in performance studies, and it will be starting an interdisciplinary MFA in performing arts in the next few years.

http://theatre.concordia.ca/index.php

A new, multi-disciplinary program is starting in the fall of 2006, granting MA and PhD degrees in Performance Studies. It describes Performance Studies as concerned with forms and areas of performance not typically accommodated within the field of Theatre Studies; committed to using performance as a critical method for viewing objects, events and behaviours that are not generally understood in theatrical or dramaturgical terms; understood epidemiologically as an embodied means of knowledge generation and representation – a way to discover and structure knowledge.

www.ucalgary.ca/performancestudies/

University College Northampton
University College Northampton developed its performance studies division in 1994—the first of its kind in the UK, according to the college website. Its curriculum is commitment to exploring current performance forms, such as physical theatre, forms from popular culture and interdisciplinary performance.

http://www.northampton.ac.uk/prospective_prospectus_searchall05.php?courseid=124&year=

The University of Plymouth
The University of Plymouth’s Theatre and Performance Department offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in performance. It specializes in applied, community and political theatres; performance work within specific cultural contexts; live art and avant-garde performance practices; and gender and sexuality in performance, in addition to more traditional theatrical performance courses.

http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/pages/view.asp?page=7865

University of Chicago
The University of Chicago offers a B.A. program in Theatre and Performance studies through its Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities Program (ISHU). The program offers courses through faculty from the humanities (e.g., language departments, cinema / media studies, music / ethnomusicology) and the social sciences (e.g., anthropology, politics).

http://humanities.uchicago.edu/depts/ishu/program.html

University of Bristol
The University of Bristol’s Department of Drama offers an M.A. in Cultural Performance in partnership with Welfare State International (WSI). Students spend one semester at Bristol looking at scholarly and creative approaches to cultural performance, and then they spend one semester with WSI in Cumbria combining the company's workshop / education program with advanced creative innovation training and a practical dissertation project.

  http://www.bristol.ac.uk/drama/postgrad/macp.html

Roehampton University
Roehampton University offers M.A. and M.Res. degrees in performance studies. The program takes as it object performance in a myriad of cultural forms, from traditional concerns with drama, dance and theatrical representation, to wider questions of ritual practice, social role, and the performativity of cultural identity.

http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/pg/ps/

The University of Sydney
The Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney grounds its curriculum in the study of performative practices across and between cultures, history, and conventional social categories. Focusing on theatre, spectacle, dance and ritual, the program draws on disciplines including anthropology, history, sociology, semiotics, architecture, and theatre studies in order to examine how cultural performances are linked to everyday interactions. The department collaborates with practicing artists across many performance genres so that students can observe, document, analyze, and theorize about the performance practices they witness, engaging current ethnographic practice.

http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/perform/index.shtml

Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw’s newly galvanized Performance Studies Department links studies in cultural anthropology, sociology, drama, oral interpretation of literature, literary criticism, folklore, mythology, and psychology to those in the creative process of making art and the critical process of analyzing performances (both staged and ritual-like performances of everyday life).

http://www.kennesaw.edu/theatre/NEWS_EVENTS/What-Is-TPS.html