Department of Communication Studies
Performance Studies Area
Louisiana State University

Performance Studies at LSU is part of a vibrant, engaged, and humane approach to the study of communication. Faculty in performance at LSU include Michael Bowman, Ruth Laurion Bowman, Jacqueline Burleson, Tracy Stephenson Shaffer, and Patricia Suchy.

Our course curriculum addresses three main trajectories: everyday life and cultural performance, stage adaptations of texts and other materials, and the avant-garde and performance art. Our home and research laboratory, the HopKins Black Box theatre, plays host to a full slate of undergraduate and graduate courses in performance studies and an annual season of public performances staged by our students, faculty, and guest artists.

Besides courses in performances in everyday life, performance of poetry and narrative, performances and theories of the body, performance art, autoperformance, etc., recent graduate seminars have engaged ethnography, critical and performance theory, cultural studies, performance history and historiography, documentary film, tourism as performance, performance technologies, and performative writing. Our performance studies area also takes the lead in teaching the history, theory, and practice of film and video in the department.

For more information about performance studies at LSU, please visit the department's website at www.lsu.edu/cmst and the Hopkins Black Box Theater at www.lsu.edu/hbb.