Graduate Program

In the past decades, graduate study in the field of performance studies has undergone an energetic renovation, and “performance” itself has become critical to scholarship and research across the humanities. At the same time, this disciplinary ferment has demanded a much higher degree of specialization and of scholarly rigor from Ph.D. candidates seeking academic careers at the college and university level. The Graduate Group Ph.D. in Performance Studies at Berkeley is at the cutting edge of this epistemic shift. Centered in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, it is composed of an unrivalled faculty drawn from across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Doctoral students have the opportunity to engage in performance activities that complement dissertation research, which itself ranges across the contemporary horizon of performance studies, as shown by the breadth of dissertation topics and placement information on this web site.