Performance Studies
Department of Communication
University of South Florida

Performance Studies is an important part of a vibrant graduate program in Communication at USF. Three faculty members in performance, Elizabeth Bell, Stacy Holman Jones, and Marcy Chvasta, offer graduate courses across a spectrum of approaches and genres. Graduate courses include Performance Theory, History, and Criticism, as well as courses in Performance & Technology, Performance Art, Performance as Social Resistance, Performance & Performativity, and Performance & Feminism.

Graduate students are encouraged to create performance work—inside and outside these classes--especially performance art, installations, and alternative media pieces, as well as to participate in traditionally staged pieces in our black box space. In the past two years, Spiderwoman Theater and Tim Miller have conducted week-long performance residencies in the Department at our invitation. The spring 2004 production was an adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s The Bad Beginning, with a cast and crew of fifteen graduate and undergraduate students.

Teaching Assistants in our program regularly teach the beginning performance class, a requirement for Communication majors.

Please see the Department's website for more information.