Home > News > UCLA DEPARTMENT OF WORLD ARTS AND CULTURES OFFERS NEW GRADUATE DEGREES IN CULTURE AND PERFORMANCE

UCLA DEPARTMENT OF WORLD ARTS AND CULTURES OFFERS NEW GRADUATE DEGREES IN CULTURE AND PERFORMANCE

Carolyn Campbell (ccampbel@arts.ucla.edu) (310) 825-6540
For Immediate Use Wednesday, January 31, 2001.



New M.A. and Ph.D. degree programs in Culture and Performance are being offered in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures (WAC), part of the School of the Arts and Architecture. Guided by a faculty of cultural anthropologists, folklorists, dance scholars and arts practitioners, the new programs are devoted to the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural study of performance and other aesthetic practices.

Subjects investigated by graduate students in Culture and Performance range from local community festivals and ritual performances to the often-overlooked aesthetics of everyday life to the deliberative productions of cosmopolitan, professionalized art centers and the global mass media. The new degree programs are worldwide in scope, with faculty and students conducting ethnographic and historical research in Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America, and in Asian American, African American and Native American communities within the United States.

The foundation of the Culture and Performance M.A. and Ph.D. programs is a sequence of three seminars devoted to interdisciplinary perspectives on culture, intercultural approaches to the study of performance and ethnographic research methods. Beyond this core, students will enjoy considerable freedom in designing their own individualized programs of study. Working in consultation with members of the faculty, they may incorporate practice-based courses in the performing, visual and media arts. The programs will also offer students the option of developing specialized professional skills in fields such as folklore, dance studies, museology and ethnographic video.

“UCLA’s urban setting — a vibrant cosmopolitan center endowed with a multi-lingual, culturally diverse population — provides graduate students with special opportunities for field research, community involvement and creative work,” said Christopher Waterman, department chair. “We hope to attract a dynamic mixture of scholars, artists and arts activists to this new program.”

Applications for fall 2002 will be available September 1, 2001. Deadline for receipt of applications will be December 15, 2001.

The faculty of World Arts and Cultures is an interdisciplinary, intercultural cohort of artists and scholars, whose fields of expertise range from anthropology, folklore, dance theory, political science and psychology to choreography, theatrical performance and videography. The department’s diverse programs of teaching, research and art-making are unified by a shared concern with problems of cultural identity and difference; the meaning of tradition in contemporary societies; the forging of connections between critical theory and artistic practice; and the changing social roles and responsibilities of artists and scholars of the arts, both in the United States and world-wide.

WAC Culture and Performance Core Faculty

Donald J. Cosentino
Oral performance, vernacular religion and material culture. West Africa, the Caribbean and Southern California.

Irma Dosamantes-Beaudry
Arts in healing and therapy, feminist psychology, hybrid identity. North America.

David Gere
Dance history and theory, queer theory, AIDS and dance. North America, South India.

Peter Nabokov
Vernacular architecture, comparative religion. Native North America, India.

Michael Owen Jones
Folk art and aesthetics, folk medicine, vernacular religion, foodways. North America.

Colin Quigley
Ethnochoreology, ethnomusicology, folklore. Europe, North America.

Allen F. Roberts
Visual and popular culture, ritual, poetics of space, Islam. Africa and African diasporas.

Marta Savigliano
Political economy, feminist theory, cultural studies, performative ethnography, critical fiction. Latin America.

Christopher A. Waterman
Anthropology of music, performance arts, popular culture. Africa, African Americas.


Contact: Carolyn Campbell
Phone: (310) 825-6540
Email: ccampbel@arts.ucla.edu