Graduate Certificate in World Performance Studies
Beginning Winter 2015

The Center for World Performance Studies is delighted to announce a new Graduate Certificate in World Performance Studies. The new certificate will welcome its first cohort in the winter of 2015. Thanks to the leadership of Kwasi Ampene and his Steering Committee, CWPS will join the ranks of a growing number of centers in the International Institute at the University of Michigan with well-established and thriving graduate certificate programs. These include the: Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and the Center Southeast Asian Studies.

The Center aspired to a certificate program in 2001 by establishing the Graduate Student Residency Program. Between 2001 and 2009, CWPS sponsored 55 graduate student residencies. Now, after years of planning, CWPS will offer a Graduate Certificate in World Performance Studies, fulfilling a need and goal for the Center since 2001.

The graduate certificate requires nine credit hours of coursework over the span of 12 months. Of these, six credits will be earned in two required courses while three credits will be taken by students in their home unit and double-counted towards the certificate program.

Program Description:

Introduction to Performance Studies (winter): This gateway seminar will examine issues pertaining to the definitions of performance as an artistic and scholarly field of inquiry, and critically examine the ranges and sites of performance as well as its various manifestations.  

Summer Internship/Research/Practicum: Students will be required to do an internship, research, or a practicum for four to six weeks. The summer research can be designed as preliminary research for a dissertation project or a final performance project in the student’s home department. Funding for the summer component will be provided by CWPS and will be available between May and August.

Proseminar and Presentation of Capstone Project (fall): The Proseminar is for students to report and discuss summer projects and to prepare for public presentations for the end of the fall semester. The capstone project can be based on a chapter from a dissertation that is most closely related to issues in performance studies, or a substantially rewritten paper from one of the courses in the home unit that has a bearing on performance studies, or it can be a performance.