University of California at Riverside

Located in the center of campus, the 161-foot UCR Bell Tower was dedicated in 1966. The carillon within the top of the tower is a musical instrument consisting of 48 tuned brass bells. The bells range in weight from 28 pounds to 5,091 pounds. Carillon concerts are played throughout the year.

Department of Dance

Dance at UCR offers the best of two worlds: artistic exploration and academic growth.

Students in the Bachelor of Arts program in Dance gain in-depth experience as choreographers authoring their own work, while forming a cultural and historical perspective on the art of dance. The principal areas of study are movement practices, dance composition, performance, production, pedagogies, cultural and historical studies, and digital or screen studies. Movement practice courses are offered in modern, ballet, tap, dance forms from Mexico and 18 th-century Europe, and other movement forms as they are practiced in various cultures of the world.

The MFA in Experimental Choreography constructs the opportunity for highly motivated choreographers to conduct both research in dance and an assessment of contemporary issues in dance aesthetics, history and culture. The focus of this program is the development of experimental choreography that challenges cultural assumptions and is informed by a critical and reflective perspective. Core courses focus on what constitutes an experiment in contemporary dance, improving choreography, systems of representation used to create choreographic meaning, and the collaborative process. Through close cooperation with the Ph.D. program in Dance History and Theory, students explore the dynamic relationships between theory, method, and object of study.

The Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies – the first of its kind in the United States – provides an advanced interdisciplinary base for innovative research in the emerging field of cultural and historical studies of dance. The program embraces a theoretical consideration of all dimensions of the practice of dance. These dimensions include, but are not limited to, digital culture; body politics; media studies; mobilization and class; ethnicity, sexuality, and gender; and corporeal knowledges and choreography. In addition to theoretical and historical concerns, the program also promotes the articulation of a number of methodological approaches to the analysis of bodily performance. The faculty puts into motion a variety of modes of production, including performance studies, technology, choreography, history, critical race theory, feminist studies/masculinities, Marxism/post-Marxism, ethnography and witnessing, and other specific area studies such as African Diaspora Studies, Asian Diaspora and Asian American Studies, Native American Studies, and South Asian Studies. The program provides a provocative environment for investigating unexplored strategies for original scholarly work in dance.

The Department of Dance at UCR is distinctive for its outstanding faculty of nationally recognized scholars and artists who draw from a variety of academic and creative backgrounds, including choreography, history, literature, anthropology, performance studies and cultural studies. In addition, visiting professional dancers, choreographers, and scholars come to UCR frequently to conduct workshops, master classes and lectures.

Department of Music

The Department features a distinctive and supportive environment for study in music. It emphasizes close interaction between its students and faculty, and provides for a continuously expanding range of musical and intellectual pursuits. Faculty interests range from traditional Western art music (offering foundational study in traditional musicology, theory, and composition) and ethnomusicology (music ethnography) to cultural studies, gender/sexuality, critical theory, free improvisation, digital and electronic music composition, popular music and the culture industry (including television and film as well as computer gaming), area studies, and many others. The entire faculty shares a belief in the importance of musical performance, an activity in which many are regularly engaged, and students receive individual attention in both research and creative projects.

Composition

The UCR Music Department has featured a strong area focus on composition for many years, with a reputation for pushing the boundaries. With four ladder-rank composers in our Department, all with substantively different styles and pedagogies, we offer a remarkably broad approach to writing music that is deeply informed by current critical debates. Our composers create music with different aesthetics, from postmodern to free improvisation, from concert music and opera to sound design and installation, and they have consistently attracted students who are willing to expand their horizons. One of the main focuses of our composition program is electro-acoustic and digital composition. We explore the domains of music and sound art that emerge in the realm of electronic media, digitalization, and telematics communication, as well as the connection between music and other artistic and scientific fields such as visual arts, theater, dance, engineering and computer science. However, our interdisciplinary approach to composition is not abstract but rather emphasizes the social and cultural contexts of the musical experience, reflecting on notions such as subjectivity, identity, diversity, and gender.

The objectives in composition include giving students a thorough grounding in historical and contemporary compositional practice along with a strong emphasis in digital technologies for creation (sound design, computer composition, digital interactivity, new hybrid media), documentation (recording, digital editing, etc.), and production (sequencing, acoustic-digital hybrid works, interactive digital performance and installation). The program encourages multiple modes of musical practice, including participation in ensembles, working both in both traditional composition and sound design, as well as pursuing scholarly inquiry in cultural, media, and technocultural studies.

Ethnomusicology

Ethnomusicology is a core strength of the UCR Music Department and features a theoretical orientation emphasizing new approaches to ethnographic research with a focus on cultural theory/cultural studies. Faculty members’ specialties include area-studies emphases in Southeast Asia, Asian America, and Latin America. Combined with more than a dozen affiliated faculty in other departments, five world-music performance ensembles, and a new undergraduate major in Music and Culture, this makes the ethnomusicology program at UCR a leader in several areas of research and performance.

The ethnomusicology program is committed to training a new generation of music scholars to bring the insights of cutting-edge cultural theory to original research based on solidly grounded, finely detailed ethnographic fieldwork. Beyond area-studies strengths in Latin America and Asia, our ethnomusicology faculty are known for their engagement with theoretical concerns at the forefront of contemporary research in their field, including music’s relationship with popular culture, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, technology, politics, memory, and globalization. Though our program appeals particularly to graduate students who have wide-ranging curiosity about music and cultural meaning, drawing on fields ranging from anthropology to cultural studies and literary criticism, we also prepare students for the kinds of far-ranging interdisciplinary conversations that are a hallmark of the field of ethnomusicology today.

Musicology

The musicology program at UCR features a major focus on the musical heritage of Iberia and Latin America; in fact, UCR offers one of the leading musicology programs in this area in the world. The Center for Iberian and Latin American Music is located in the department and sponsors yearly Encuentros/Encounters, conferences and concerts exploring a particular aspect of the Hispanic musical heritage. Previous Encounters have dealt with topics as diverse as the impact of Goya on Spanish musical nationalism around 1900, and music and politics in the Andes. In 2007, the focus will be on the transnational impact of Mexican sones. The Center also publishes an online journal, Diagonal.

However, the faculty’s interests extend to a wide range of subjects, including British music, especially Elgar and Vaughan Williams, critical musicology, and early music. Of special interest to our scholars is the intersection of music, politics, and culture in the formation of national identity in the twentieth century. Musicology students benefit from working with leading scholars in several areas of research, in both their own field and in ethnomusicology. They are encouraged to maintain and develop their skills as performers through participation in the department’s many ensembles, both Western and non-Western.

Department and the Film and Visual Culture Program!

The Film and Visual Culture major provides an interdisciplinary examination of film, video, television, multimedia, and visual culture with a primary emphasis on history and theory and a secondary focus on production. The major consists of three curricular tracks, in one of which students may concentrate:

1. Film and Visual Media
2. Film, Literature, and Culture
3. Ethnography, Documentary, and Visual Culture

The Film and Visual Culture major combines the breadth of an interdisciplinary major with a precise focus on visual media. Its interdisciplinary structure brings together approaches to visual media that would usually be separated by discipline. Students have a unique opportunity to acquire critical skills in the reading and analysis of media texts together with those involved in various modes of media production. This applied experience includes training in creative, documentary, and ethnographic video; photography; multimedia production; and screenwriting. Familiarity with media, either for its academic or industrial applications, enhances one's understanding of any field in the humanities or social sciences today.

Department of Theater

Undergraduate Programs

Undergraduate Degree
Majoring in Theatre will lead to a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre.

The Undergraduate General Theatre Track focuses on three broad areas:

1. Theatre literature, history, theory, and criticism
2. Performance, design, direction, technology, and writing
3. Production

Students begin their studies by examining all the elements that go into creating theatre and then gradually focus more attention on their particular area of interest.

The Undergraduate Writing Track is for those students who are primarily interested in pursuing the goal of writing for theatre, film, or television.  This track also focuses on three broad areas with special emphasis on playwriting and screenwriting.  Students in the Writing Track are able to take advantage of the Department’s active production program, which is essential to the training of playwrights and screenwriters.

Students may choose to minor in Theatre while pursuing a major in a different department.  The minor in Theatre follows the structure of the major requirements by exposing students to each of the areas that are essential to the creation of theatre, with the opportunity to take an additional course for depth or more exposure. The inclusion of THEA 170 (Advanced Dramatic Production) gives the students the opportunity to put course work into the proper context and provides them with a practical understanding of the workings of production.

The Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) degree in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts offers writers the ability to move fluidly within various arenas of creative writing, including the genres of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, and screenwriting, as well as in multimedia studies. The program integrates scholarly studies of narrative, style, voice, structure, and history of these writing disciplines with traditional workshop formats, forming writers who can actively direct the literature of the twenty-first century.