Welcome to Communication Arts

Welcome! In the Department of Communication Arts, we believe that understanding and experiencing the many facets of performance and communication contribute to a rich and complete humanities education. All our programs integrate academic and practical work to produce the best education in our disciplines.

We currently offer three sets of degree programs and one minor: Communication Studies, Theatre and Performance, Communication Arts and Design Practice and Digital Arts Communication. Our faculty pursue distinct and overlapping areas of work encompassing teaching, research, and creative activity in digital arts communication, theatre theory and practice, and communication as the processes by which people create meaning in communities.

NEW 

The Department of Communication Arts is proud to introduce a new program starting Fall 2021: Communication Arts and Design Practice.

In the Department of Communication Arts, we are working towards futures defined by more just forms of relationality among humans, and between humans and our environments. This new program will communicate concepts that can change discourses and lead to differences in institutional and social or public behaviour. This academic plan is committed to rigorous theoretically-informed practice; project-based, interdisciplinary and collaborative pedagogy; and experiential learning. The central aim of this new program is to integrate critically informed creative design practices with theoretical analysis of multimodal forms of representation and public processes of meaning-making.

The Department of Communication Arts acknowledges that we are on the traditional territory of the Attawandaron (also known as the Neutral), Anishinaabeg, and Haudenosaunee peoples. The University of Waterloo is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land promised to the Six Nations that includes ten kilometres on each side of the Grand River. 

News

  1. Apr. 5, 2023Job Opening: Writing for Performance Course Instructor

    The Theatre and Performance program at the University of Waterloo is searching for an instructor for our Writing for Performance course (THPERF 366) which will be offered in the fall term. This is a course for upper-year students to explore techniques for analyzing, interpreting, and creating texts for theatre and performance. Currently, this is the only course we offer that serves students who want to write plays; so, part of this course should include the basics of play writing.

  2. Mar. 25, 2023Dr. Naila Keleta-Mae wins Dorothy Killam Fellowship
    Dr. Nalia Keleta-Mae

    The National Killam Program announced that Dr. Naila Keleta-Mae (Communication Arts) has won a 2023 Dorothy Killam Fellowship that provides support for dedicated research time to scholars “whose superior, ground-breaking, best-in-class research stands to have significant impact on a national or global scale.”

  3. Mar. 21, 2023Portia's Julius Caesar - ON THIS WEEK
    Poster for production, a Black woman with hair up, looks out from centre of poster

    THIS WEEK ONLY!!

Read all news

The Department of Communication Arts acknowledges that we are on the traditional territory of the Attawandaron (also known as the Neutral), Anishinaabeg, and Haudenosaunee peoples. The University of Waterloo is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land promised to the Six Nations that includes ten kilometres on each side of the Grand River. Read more about territorial acknowledgement.