Center for World Performance Studies
Performance Studies through a global lens
The Center for World Performance Studies (CWPS) was established in 2000 to serve the needs of faculty and a student body with an interest in the discipline of Performance Studies, expressly through a global lens. Since that time, CWPS has worked to offer a multidisciplinary space for artists, performers, scholars, and the community for intellectual interactions and public performances. CWPS is situated at an exciting intersection of scholarly, creative, community and critical practices.
Mission & Strategic Priorities
The Center for World Performance Studies seeks to create intellectual and physical space for the study of performance. Our aim is to advocate for performance as a mode of research and as a means of public engagement, centering on underrepresented, non-Western, and diasporic voices, bodies, and acts. We connect—both locally and globally—students, faculty, artists, thinkers, and scholars in order to educate each other about Performance Studies and to promote interdisciplinary and intersectional insights and research methodologies.
Our work aims to advance interdisciplinary performance studies practices through four primary programs and activities:
- Artist & Scholar Residencies, Speaker Series, Symposia and Classroom Teaching
- Graduate Fellows program with Certificate in World Performance Studies
- Faculty Fellows program, providing funds for intensive summer research projects
- Funding for Student and Faculty Projects and Co-sponsorships with Centers, Departments and Units throughout the University
Programs & Initiatives
Artist & Scholar Residencies
CWPS brings leading artists, faculty and scholars in the field of World Performance Studies to campus through its Artist & Scholar Residency program. Through our robust programming, we provide many opportunities for student and faculty interaction with visitors including class visits, seminars, roundtables, public lectures, demonstrations and performances. All are welcomed and encouraged to attend these events.
Faculty Lecture Series
The Faculty Lecture Series features our Faculty Fellows and visiting scholars and practitioners in the fields of ethnography and performance. Designed to create an informal and intimate setting for intellectual exchange among students, scholars, and the community, faculty are invited to present their work in an interactive and performative fashion.
Sponsored UM Courses
CWPS sponsors semester-long courses in world performance studies-related subjects. Recent courses include West African Drum & Dance with guest faculty T. Ayo Alston of Chicago’s Ayodele Drum & Dance. This course will be offered again for Winter 2025.
Graduate Certificate
World Performance Studies
The Graduate Certificate in World Performance Studies (GCWPS) is a one-year program that provides students an opportunity to join an interdisciplinary cohort of Graduate Fellows, interested in performance as an artistic and scholarly field of inquiry.
Applications for the 2025 cohort are due Monday, October 28.
Faculty Fellows
The Center for World Performance Studies provides summer funding to individual faculty members to pursue research projects which involve traveling to various sites for field work, both domestically and internationally. We encourage inventive ideas, especially those that involve thematic support for CWPS mission, including ethnography and performance as research.
Fellows are invited to share their research with the CWPS community through our Faculty Lecture Series and as mentors to graduate students in the Certificate in World Performance Studies. Applications to the Faculty Fellows Program are accepted annually in March.
Funding Opportunities
The Center for World Performance Studies offers co-sponsorship grants to undergraduate and graduate students as well as faculty. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
Undergraduate
Registered student organizations may apply for up to $500 in funds for events that align with the Center’s mission to advocate for performance as a mode of research and as a means of public engagement, centering on underrepresented, non-Western, and diasporic voices, bodies, and acts.
Graduate
Graduate students may apply for up to $1000 in co-sponsorship funds. CWPS supports a wide variety of graduate student projects across the university—all of which serve to strengthen intellectual and cultural life on campus and beyond.
Faculty
Departments and individual faculty may apply for up to $1000 in co-sponsorship funds for a project or event. CWPS co-sponsors a wide variety of faculty projects across the university—all of which serve to strengthen intellectual and cultural life on campus and beyond. Our faculty fellows program also offers funding for summer research. Visit the faculty fellows page for more information about the faculty fellows program.
For more faculty co-sponsorship funding information and to apply
People / Affiliates
View a listing of CWPS people including the director and staff, Advisory Committee, and Faculty Affiliates.
Support CWPS
The Center for World Performance Studies promotes the scholarly study of music, dance, and theater and, by extension, all forms of expressive arts across the globe through interdisciplinary and engaged dialogues between scholars, students, and performance specialists.
It raises the awareness of and advocates for the greater inclusion of underrepresented cultures within the academy.
Your tax-deductible donations support the University’s commitment to globalization and diversity in the twenty-first century by supporting student and faculty fellowships, initiatives, research, and international collaboration with the purpose of increasing knowledge of performing arts around the globe
If you are interested in making a planned gift to CWPS, please contact our center at 734-936-2777 or [email protected].
Support CWPS
The Center for World Performance Studies promotes the scholarly study of music, dance, and theater and, by extension, all forms of expressive arts across the globe through interdisciplinary and engaged dialogues between scholars, students, and performance specialists.
It raises the awareness of and advocates for the greater inclusion of underrepresented cultures within the academy.
Your tax-deductible donations support the University’s commitment to globalization and diversity in the twenty-first century by supporting student and faculty fellowships, initiatives, research, and international collaboration with the purpose of increasing knowledge of performing arts around the globe
If you are interested in making a planned gift to CWPS, please contact our center at 734-936-2777 or [email protected].
Contact Us
- Michael Gould, Director
- Molly Paberzs, Academic Program Specialist
General questions? Email [email protected] or call (734) 764-9681.
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