The field of communication offers the study of whiteness a focus on discourse which directs its attention to the everyday experiences of whiteness through regimes of truth, embodied acts, and the deconstruction of mediated texts. This book takes an intersectional approach to whi…
This ambitious and vivid study in six volumes explores the journey of a single, electrifying story, from its first incarnation in a medieval French poem through its prolific rebirth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Juggler of Notre Dame tells how an entertainer aba…
This dissertation compares and contrasts the performance works of two Indigenous transdisciplinary artists who have historically been discussed as dancers or choreographers: Yup’ik artist Emily Johnson and Seneca artist Rosy Simas. By considering their dance works alongside thei…
This project interrogates anti-Black violence within the American interstate system and examines artistic and activist modes of refusal communities have deployed. I specifically meditate on everyday refusals and placemaking strategies as performances which map and [w]right—as in…
This thesis analyzes, for the first time, how audiences have engaged with Shakespeare in both colonial and post-colonial Punjab, a state in India. It demonstrates how Shakespeare’s cultural mobility is dependent upon how target cultures re-semniotize his plays to accommodate ele…
Seventeenth-century Venetian operatic divas pioneered a new social identity for women both onstage, as virtuosic opera singers, and as independent professionals in Venice. They accomplished this partly in prototypical commercial opera houses. From such spaces, the sounds of thei…
This dissertation offers an outlined proposal and a model for practicing queer oral history—a nuancing of oral history praxis. Queer oral history is rooted in performance studies’ call to consider everyday texts alongside Dwight Conquergood’s (1985) articulations of ethical and …
Performing the Electrical traces the histories and futures of electrical discovery and knowledge through cultural performances, socio-political assemblages, and the more-than-human worldmaking functions of energy in general and electricity in particular, or what I refer to as en…
This practice-as-research project investigates pluralistic approaches to the construction of place through art-making. I propose ‘place-making’ as a theory of practice which aims to encourage artists and practitioner-researchers to challenge dominant socio-spatial configurations…
The Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) and the Adelaide Festival, and their associated Fringe Festivals, are large international multi-arts events that focus on artistic excellence and annually imbue their host cities with month-long festive atmospheres. They are also mobili…
This thesis is a socio-political analysis of the United Kingdom’s contemporary national identity, as expressed through an intercultural examination of eight Anton Chekhov’s productions presented in the country between 2009 and 2011, characterised by their aesthetic and socio-pol…
This thesis investigates the cultural uses and implied signifying practices of the work of actors who are popularly and frequently described as 'Shakespearean.' Though ubiquitous figures within culture, there is a dearth of criticism which questions what qualities are invoked in…
“Entertaining Strangers” reveals how theories and practices of hospitality shaped and were shaped by the early modern print and theater industries. Whereas earlier studies of hospitality and literature have focused on aristocratic patronage, in this dissertation I reveal the vit…
This PhD dissertation analyzes espionage as a form of theatre and performance. Using archival documents, comparative analysis of theatre and espionage case-studies, and the application of critical theory, espionage is revealed to be a theatrical endeavor. It is a paramount examp…
This dissertation examines masculinities in relation to Pahlavi-era Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran, within diaspora, as well as the limitations of an ethno-cultural/gender study through ideologies of postidentification. "Performing Persianicity" functions as trope and design…
Cultures are defined by their boundaries. American culture often calls this boundary "the frontier," and has built a strong mythic interpretation of this frontier. People living on this frontier behave in ways that may not be considered "civilized." Borrowing from Roach's work i…
Since the beginning of the triangular African slave trade, many African Americans have held a fascination with Africa as demonstrated through the recirculation of the "return to Africa" meme found in their storytelling, religious practices and music. From sequestered spaces of u…
Eighteenth and nineteenth century anthropology and ethnography constructed the "Other" as visually spectacular, something to be interpreted and understood according to prevalent scientific theories of the time. The "Other" was voiceless and had no input in the official ethnograp…