MA/PhD symposium "Out of the Margins: Re-Focusing Performance Scholarship for the 21st Century"

MA/PhD symposium "Out of the Margins: Re-Focusing Performance Scholarship for the 21st Century"

College of Arts and Humanities | School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies Thursday, March 9, 2023 4:00 pm - 3:00 pm The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center,

This event has ended.

“Out of the Margins” was the latest Ph.D. symposium offered by TDPS, which annually brought together leading scholars, affiliated faculty, and advanced graduate students to engage significant trends in performance scholarship. In addition to challenging the field to re-center marginalized and global majority practices, this year’s symposium spotlighted TDPS’s role in addressing vital issues regarding the state of Ph.D. programs in the arts and humanities. This event was funded in part by the College of Arts and Humanities and Arts for All.

Out of the Margins: Re-Focusing Performance Scholarship for the 21st Century is co-sponsored by:

• The MA–Ph.D. Programs in Theatre and Performance Studies
• The School of Theatre Dance, and Performance Studies,
• The College of Arts and Humanities Conferences, Events and Programming Fund,
• The College of Arts and Humanities Artist-in-Residence Fund,
• The Arts for All UMD Initiative.

Event Details

- Thursday, March 9

- Friday, March 10

Presenter Bios

Event Details

Presenter Bios 

Lindsey R. Barr (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate whose research focuses on the representation of madness in the contemporary American musical as it intersects with race and gender. Her work has been published in Studies in Musical Theatre, The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre, and (M)Other Perspectives: Staging the Maternal in 21st Century Performance. A professional dramaturg and director, her work has been seen at Baltimore Center Stage, Everyman Theatre, Single Carrot Theatre, and the Goethe Institute, among others. In addition to her work as an artist and scholar, she is an arts administrator with over a decade of experience and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas.

Crystal U. Davis, MFA, CLMA is a dancer, movement analyst, and critical race theorist. Her research explores implicit bias in dance and how privilege manifests in the body. Her work has been published in the  Journal of Dance Education, Palgrave Handbook of Race and the Arts in Education, and in her book, Dance and Belonging: Implicit Bias and Inclusion in Dance Education. As an artist, her performances span from Rajasthani folk dance to postmodern choreography examining incongruities between what we say, what we believe, and what we do. She is an Assistant Professor of Dance Performance and Scholarship at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she teaches anti-racist pedagogy for dance and theater, modern technique, somatics, and movement analysis.

Michelle Granshaw is an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests include U.S. and Irish theatre, popular entertainment, and performance, performances of race, ethnicity, gender, and class, global and diasporic performance, and historiography. Her book, "Irish on the Move: Performing Mobility in American Variety Theatre" was published in 2019 by the University of Iowa Press. Her essays have appeared in Theatre Survey, Popular Entertainment Studies, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, Theatre Topics, New England Theatre Journal, the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, and American Literature in Transition: The Long Nineteenth Century. She is currently working on her second book titled "The Fight for Desegregation: Race, Freedom, and the Theatre after the Civil War." She serves on the Executive Board for ATDS and co-organizes ATDS’s Career Conversations and the First Book Bootcamp. 

James M. Harding is an internationally known scholar whose work focuses on political activism and the arts, the history of experimental theatre, theatre in the 1960s, post 9/11 theatre and performance, the intersection of surveillance and performance, and on performance studies more generally. His most recent monograph is entitled Performance, Transparency and the Cultures of Surveillance (Michigan, 2018). He is the author of three previous monographs: The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s): Exorcising Experimental Theatre and Performance (Michigan, 2013), Cutting Performances: Collage Events, Feminist Artists and the American Avant-Garde (Michigan, 2010), and Adorno and "A Writing of the Ruins": Essays on Modern Aesthetics and Anglo-American Literature and Culture (SUNY, 1997). He has co-edited five anthologies, and his articles have appeared in Performing Arts Journal, TDR, Performance International, Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Modern Drama, and PMLA as well as in numerous collections. In 2017, Harding received the year’s “Outstand Article Award” from American Theatre in Higher Education for his article “Incendiary Acts and Apocryphal Avant-Gardes: Thích Quảng Ðức, Self-Immolation, and Buddhist Spiritual Vanguardism” (PAJ, 2017).'

Franklin J. Hildy is Professor of Theatre History. He was elected as a lifetime Fellow of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre “honoring distinguished service and notable accomplishment by individuals of recognized national stature” in 2010. In 2015 he was elected as a lifetime Senior Research Fellow of Shakespeare’s Globe, London. He was the only American among the seven inaugural recipients of this prestigious award which was created to “recognize the extraordinary contribution to knowledge of Shakespearean theatre.” Professor Hildy is co-author, with the late Oscar G. Brockett, of five editions of History of the Theatre; author of Shakespeare at the Maddermarket; editor of New Issues in the Reconstruction of Shakespeare's Theatre; volume editor for the Society for Theatre Research’s publication of Shakespeare for Everyman by Don-John Dugas; and is General Editor for theatre-finder.org, an on-line index of all existing theatres over 100 years old. Professor Hildy has published over 70 articles and anthology essays on historic theatre architecture and stage technology, theatre archaeology, the history of Shakespeare in performance, and on Digital Humanities in theatre research. 

Kate Keeney (she/her) is Associate Professor and Program Director of Arts Management at the College of Charleston. Her research interests bridge arts management and nonprofit management scholarship with a specific focus on cultural policy, leadership, and organizations. She serves as a consulting editor for the Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, and as second vice president for the South Carolina Arts Alliance. Additionally, she has completed research on local arts initiatives with the Riley Center for Livable Communities at the College of Charleston. Keeney especially enjoys collaborating with others, and her work has been published in the Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society; Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy; and the Journal of Nonprofit Education and Leadership, among others. Previously, Keeney managed several high-level, university-wide initiatives at Virginia Tech, including the construction of the $100 million Moss Arts Center. She has held professional positions at the National Symphony Orchestra at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Americans for the Arts, the Cathedral Choral Society, and the New York Philharmonic. Keeney is a violist and holds a PhD in Public Administration from Virginia Tech and a Master of Arts Administration from American University.

Esther Kim Lee (she/her) is a Professor of Theater Studies, the International Comparative Studies, and History at Duke University. She is also the Director of Asian American & Diaspora Studies Program at Duke. She teaches and writes about theatre history, Asian American theatre, Korean diaspora theatre, and globalization and theatre. She has authored three monographs: A History of Asian American Theatre (2006), which received the Outstanding Book Award given by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education; The Theatre of David Henry Hwang (2015); and Made-Up Asians: Yellowface During the Exclusion Era (2022). She edited Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas (2012) and the four-volume collection, Modern and Contemporary World Drama: Critical and Primary Sources (2022), which challenges the prevailing Eurocentric reading of modern drama. http://estherkimlee.com/

Khalid Y. Long (he/him) is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Films Studies and the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Georgia. Dr. Long is a scholar, dramaturg, and director specializing in African American/Black diasporic theatre, performance, and literature through the lenses of Black feminist/womanist thought, queer studies, and performance studies. Accordingly, his work pays close attention to the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality within marginalized and oppressed communities. Dr. Long is working on his manuscript, An Architect of Black Feminist Theatre: Glenda Dickerson, Transnational Feminism, and The Kitchen Prayer Series (contracted with the University of Iowa Press). He is the co-editor of the forthcoming anthology, Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance: Acts of Rebellion, Activism, and Solidarity (Methuen Drama), to be released in May of 2023. Additionally, he is co-editing a forthcoming anthology, August Wilson in Context, under contract with Cambridge University Press. Dr. Long is the Vice President for Advocacy for the Association of Theatre in Higher Education, and the Vice President and Conference Planner for the Black Theatre Association (ATHE).

Alex W. Miller (he/him) is a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research sits at the intersection of digital media and performance, from video games to multimedia theatre. He has presented papers at the American Society for Theatre Research Conference, as well as at the University of California Irvine Esports Conference. A dramaturg by training, he has worked with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company in Boston, MA, and Book-It Repertory Theatre in Seattle, WA.

Jared Strange (he/him) is a PhD Candidate and Mary Savage Snouffer Fellow at the University of Maryland, as well as a writer, dramaturg, educator, and critic based in Washington, DC. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from Texas Tech University. His scholarship and reviews can be found in Theatre Research International, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Comparative Drama, Theatre Journal, TDR, the Washington City Paper, DC Theatre Arts and a series of historical websites for The National Theatre. His plays have been produced and developed across the United States and in Europe, including at the MeetFactory in Prague, DC Source Festival, Rorschach Theatre Company, WildWind Performance Lab, Bath Fringe Festival, Dayton Playhouse FutureFest, William Inge Theatre Festival, the Lubbock Community Theatre, Florida Atlantic University Theatre Lab, Texas Tech University, and the University of Maryland. As a dramaturg, Jared specializes in new play development, audience engagement, and educational materials.

Samuel Yates (they/he) Ph.D., is a deaf artist and researcher who is currently Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in the School of Theatre and Dance at Millikin University. Their current book project, Cripping Broadway: Producing Disability in the American Musical investigates disability aesthetics and accessibility practices in Broadway musicals by asking how our notions of disability and the able body inform and transform the work of the laboring actor in commercial theatre. Sam’s work on disability, performance, and popular culture is published or forthcoming in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Music Theatre Today, Studies in Musical Theatre, and Medicine and Literature, as well as edited volumes such as The Matter of Disability (U Michigan), A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury), and Monsters in Performance: Essays on the Aesthetics of Social Disqualification ​(Routledge).