Performance studies considers historical and contemporary aesthetic communication in both everyday life and the heightened, staged events more typically associated with the word performance. Everyday life performance coursework includes conversational performance, gender and performance, and performance and identity, as well as performance in political contexts such as performance and the environment.<br><br>We also offer coursework in conspicuously aesthetic performance, including adaptation of literature for the stage, performance art, autobiographical performance, ethnographic performance, and performance in mediated environments. <br><br>Students combine theory and practice into an artistic/scholarly praxis by studying and embodying performance history related to these forms, methods for performance composition, the evolution of performance theory, performance as a mode of inquiry, and critical approaches to documenting and analyzing performance as a communicative encounter.