All students of theater must learn to read plays as living texts, continuously reinvented through historically and culturally specific practices of theatrical performance. As a teacher, I endeavor not only to help my students grow as scholars and artists but also to broaden their vision of what theater can be. I design my courses to probe the boundaries of theater as an art form, and I select readings that emphasize race, gender, class, and sexual identity as vital themes in the study of theater and performance.
Theater has a paradoxical capacity to highlight human differences while also exposing those differences as constructed and artificial, and this paradox animates my teaching interests in theater history, dramatic literature and criticism, and performance studies.
By using a range of pedagogical techniques—including group projects, student presentations, course blogs, performance exercises, and excursions to see live theater—I strive to foster an inclusive learning environment in which students of all backgrounds and learning styles are encouraged to participate.
Department of English/Theater Program, Colgate University
- Theater Capstone Seminar (senior seminar for theater majors)
- Introduction to Drama (undergraduate course)
- Carnival in Performance from the Acropolis to Mardi Gras (first-year seminar)
Department of English/Writing Program, Haverford College
- Twenty-First Century Drama in the Americas (undergraduate course)
- Carnival in Performance from the Acropolis to Mardi Gras (first-year seminar)
- The Literature of Carnival and the Carnivalesque (first-year seminar)
Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown University
- Twentieth-Century Theatre History in Global Perspective (graduate seminar for MFA students)
- Persuasive Communication (undergraduate lecture)
- The Development of Twentieth-Century Theatre in the West (teaching assistantship)
- Introduction to World Theatre (teaching assistantship)
PhD, Theatre and Performance Studies, Brown University, 2012
"From the Meschianza to the Mummers Parade: Racial Impersonation in Philadelphia"
My dissertation explores the construction of identity and difference through racial impersonation, with a focus on historical moments when theater, street performance, festivity, and graphic art animated one another. By working outward from a local focus on Philadelphia toward connections with practices of racial impersonation in other parts of the Atlantic world, this project foregrounds the latent orientalism of circum-Atlantic constructions of blackness in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
“Staging Violence in Pig Iron Theatre Company’s Anodyne.” Theatre Journal 64.2 (May 2012): 197-211.
“Present-Day Kutiyattam: G. Venu’s Radical and Reactionary Sanskrit Theatre.” TDR: The Drama Review 51.3 (Fall 2007): 98-117. Winning entry, 2006 TDR Student Essay Contest.
Invited Book Chapters
“The Minstrel Wench and the Mummers Wench: A Performance Genealogy.” Festive Performance: Staging Community and Utopia in the Americas. Ed. Rachel Bowditch and Pegge Vissicaro. Chicago: Seagull Books/University of Chicago Press. Forthcoming.
“The Politics of Fetal Display.” The Anatomy of Body Worlds: Critical Essays on the Plastinated Cadavers of Gunther von Hagens. Ed. T. Christine Jespersen, Alicita Rodríguez, and Joseph Star. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009. 176-188.
Theatre history, dramatic literature, performance studies, parades and street performance
Acting
It or Her, devised by Dead Genius Productions, 2006-2007
A Theatrical Rendering of the Modern Life of Karen B, devised by Dead Genius Productions, 2005
Substitution Chart, devised by Dead Genius Productions, 2004
Directing
The Lacy Project (staged reading), by Alena Smith, 2012
The Blind, by Maurice Maeterlinck (assistant director), 2007
Apple of Discord, by Alena Smith, 2003
Dramaturgy
Cipher, by Cory Hinkle, directed by Donya Washington, 2005
Accumulation Process, devised by Rick Henderson, 2005
- American Society for Theatre Research-Cambridge University Press Prize, 2012
- Joukowsky Family Foundation Outstanding Dissertation Award, Brown University, 2012
- Dissertation Research Fellowship, American Society for Theatre Research, 2010
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Short-Term Research Fellowship, Winterthur Museum and Library, 2010
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Dissertation Fellowship, Brown University, 2009-2010
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Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellowship, Library Company of Philadelphia/Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 2009
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Graduate Student Essay Award, Theory and Criticism Focus Group, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, 2009
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Student Essay Contest Winner, TDR: The Drama Review, 2006
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First-Year Graduate Fellowship, Brown University, 2005-2006
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Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, Thomas J. Watson Foundation, 2001-2002