Research

MFA dance candidate Rose Xinran Qi competed in the Advanced Contemporary category at Starpower Dance Competition, a dance competition in Towson, MD that is part of the StarDance Alliance. Rose competed against 37 advanced dance performers, winning first place in the contemporary dance category, as well as the overall Advanced High Score Award.

PhD student Jared Strange published his article, “The World Cup’s Double-Headed Eagle: Gestures and Scenarios in the Football Arena,” in Theatre Research International.

Abstract:

During the 2018 World Cup in Russia, two Kosovo-born Swiss players stirred controversy when they flashed a double-headed eagle gesture during a contentious win over Serbia. The gesture was an assertion of ethnic Albanian pre-eminence in Kosovo and a rhetorical strike against the Serbians, who still claim ownership over Kosovo even ten years after its declaration of independence. The gesture sparked worldwide media coverage and prompted punishments by FIFA (the World Cup's governing body), which legislates against overt political expression during matches. In this article, I will examine the double-headed eagle gesture as an example of the body's unique capacity to perform multiple political interventions at once. Not only did it transmit a contentious history, it also undermined the anti-political boundaries erected around the scenarios of transnational combat engendered by FIFA, highlighted anti-immigrant sentiments still festering across Europe, and illustrated the communicative powers that elite players can access through their goal celebrations. Considering these valences supports my reading of this case as symbolic of the sort of ruptures produced by competing impulses operating in Europe today, one working for the affirmation of the union, the other for its dissolution.

Professor Scot Reese was recognized at the University of Maryland's Maryland Research Excellence Celebration on February 26. The honor acknowledges faculty who have demonstrably elevated the visibility and reputation of the University of Maryland Research Enterprise. Scot was nominated by Dean Bonnie Thornton Dill of the College of Arts & Humanities.

Ph.D. candidate Jenna Gerdsen was selected for the UMD Graduate School’s Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award for 2019-20. The award conveys the honor of being named among the top 2% of graduate assistants in the academic year. 

PhD student Jared Strange was recently hired as the dramaturg for National Theatre’s High School Ticket Program. In this job, he prepares study packets and conducts talkbacks for high school students for this season’s productions. The program collaborates with organizations such as Young Playwrights’ Theater and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

Murder. Mystery. Mayhem. Math. What begins as an investigation into the grisly death of a neighbor’s dog results in a remarkable coming-of-age journey for 15-year-old Christopher Boone. A self-described “mathematician with some behavioral problems,” our narrator sees things differently than those around him and, like fractals in a kaleidoscope, each revelation exposes another puzzle for him to solve. As the audience follows Christopher’s brilliant yet dizzying mind, the full story unravels in a visually dazzling sequence of events onstage. Simon Stephen’s beloved Tony and Olivier Award-winning adaptation of Mark Haddon’s bestselling novel challenges us to seek out the silver linings in ourselves—and others—as we make our way through the world.

Ph.D. candidate Leticia Ridley and Ph.D. student Jordan Ealey have created a new podcast called “Daughters of Lorraine,” available on HowlRound Theatre Commons. The podcast features reviews of Black theater productions, current national conversations around, within, and about Black theatre, academic discussions concerning Black theatre, recommendations on Black theatre scripts and interviews with Black theatre artists.

Placing the disciplines of performance studies and surveillance studies in a timely critical dialogue, Performance, Transparency, and the Cultures of Surveillance not only theorizes how surveillance performs but also how the technologies and corresponding cultures of surveillance alter the performance of everyday life. This exploration draws upon a rich array of examples from theatre, performance, and the arts, all of which provide vivid illustration of the book’s central argument: that the rise of the surveillance society coincides with a profound collapse of democratic oversight and transparency—a collapse that, in turn, demands a radical rethinking of how performance practitioners conceptualize art and its political efficacy. The book thus makes the case that artists and critics must reexamine—indeed, must radically redefine—their notions of performance if they are to mount any meaningful counter to the increasingly invasive surveillance society.

While much critical attention has been focused on experimental and radical theater of the period, the essays confirm that mainstream performances not only merit more scholarly attention than they have received, but through serious examination provide an important key to understanding the 1960s as a period.
 
The introduction provides a broad overview of the social, political, and cultural contexts of artistic practices in mainstream theater from the mid-fifties to mid-seventies. Readers will find detailed examinations of the mainstream’s surprising attention to craft and innovation; to the rich exchange between European and American theatres; to the rise of regional theaters; and finally, to popular cultural performances that pushed the conceptual boundaries of mainstream institutions. The book looks afresh at productions of Hair, Cabaret, Raisin in the Sun, and Fiddler on the Roof, as well as German theater, and performances outside the Democratic National Convention of 1968.

She is Cuba: A Genealogy of the Mulata Body traces the history of the Cuban mulata and her association with hips, sensuality and popular dance. It examines how the mulata choreographs her racialised identity through her hips and enacts an embodied theory called hip(g)nosis. By focusing on her living and dancing body in order to flesh out the process of identity formation, this book makes a claim for how subaltern bodies negotiate a cultural identity that continues to mark their bodies on a daily basis. Combining literary and personal narratives with historical and theoretical accounts of Cuban popular dance history, religiosity and culture, this work investigates the power of embodied exchanges: bodies watching, looking, touching and dancing with one another. It sets up a genealogy of how the representations and venerations of the dancing mulata continue to circulate and participate in the volatile political and social economy of contemporary Cuba.