MA and PhD Theatre and Performance Studies
| Graduation Year |
Degree | Name | Thesis/Dissertation Title | Specialties | Current Position |
| 1991 | PhD | Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. | "Athenia Sun in an African Sky: African Adaptations of Greek Tragedy" | Japanese theatre, African theatre, Asian cinema | Professor, Loyola Marymount University |
| 1994 | PhD | Lynne Conner | "The American Modern Dance and Its Critics: A History of Journalistic Dance Criticism in the United States, 1850-1934" | Theatre and Dance Historian, Cultural Theorist, Playwright | Professor and Chair, UNC Charlotte |
| 1998 | PhD | Stan Denman | "Theatre and hegemony in the Churches of Christ: A case study using Abilene Christian University Theatre" | Directing, Acting, Playwriting, Conservative Christianity and Theatre | Professor, Baylor University |
| 2001 | MA/PhD | David Escoffery | "Il maestro ed il duce: A reassessment of Luigi Pirandello's links to the Italian Fascist Party" | Early Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde | Senior Director of Higher Education Assessment, ETS |
| 2002 | MA | Sarah Andrews | Lawyer, Morgan Lewis | ||
| 2004 | PhD | David Jortner | "The Search for the Rising Sun: Nationalism, National Identity and the Post-War Japanese Stage" | Twentieth century Japanese theatre and the intersection of Japanese and American culture, Directing | Associate Professor, Baylor University |
| 2004 | PhD | Jae-Oh Choi | Voicing Back: The Poetics and Politics of Ping Chong's Ethno-Historiographic Fables. |
Globalization and Multiculturalism
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| 2005 | PhD | Gwendolyn Orel | "Performing Cultures: English-Language Theatres in Post-Communist Prague" |
Americanization; Asylum; bilingual theatre
|
Features Editor, The Montclair Local |
| 2006 | PhD | Maura Jortner | "Playing 'America' on Nineteenth-Century Stages; or, Jonathan in England and Jonathan at Home" | Nineteenth-Century American and English Drama | Senior Lecturer, Baylor University |
| 2007 | PhD | Siyuan Liu | "The Impact of Japanese shinpa on early Chinese huaju" | Modern and traditional Chinese theatre in the twentieth century and Asian Canadian theatre | Professor, University of British Columbia |
| 2007 | PhD | Kellee VanAken | "Race and Gender in the Broadway Chorus" | Broadway Musicals, Directing | Interim Dean, Chair, and Associate Professor, Seton Hill University |
| 2008 | PhD | Michael Schwartz | "A Matter for Experts: Broadway 1900-1920 and the Rise of the Professional Managerial Class" | Early 20th Century Broadway, class, and labor, Dramaturgy, Playwriting | Associate Professor, Indiana University of Pennsylvania |
| 2009 | MA/PhD | Lofty Durham | "Jacques Milet's 'Destruction de Troie la Grant': Reassessing French Theatre in Late Medieval Period" | Medieval Theatre and Performance | Associate Professor, Western Michigan University |
| 2009 | PhD | Stefano Muneroni | "San Hermenegildo as a Trope of Rhetorical and Theological Investigation in Spain, Italy, and Mexico (1590-1690)" | Colonial Theatre, Baroque, Jesuit Performance | Associate Professor, University of Alberta |
| 2009 | PhD | Gang-Im Lee | "Directing Koreanness: Directors and Playwrights Under the National Flag, 1970-2000" |
Community-based Theatre; Feminist Deconstruction; History and Memory; Korean Contemporary Theatre;
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| 2009 | PhD | John Jay Ball | "Missed Connections: Antony Sher's Titus Andronicus in Johannesburg." | Communitarianism; Market Theatre | |
| 2010 | PhD | Colleen Reilly | "Staging Charleston: The Spoleto Festival U.S.A." | Festivals; Memory, Performance |
Dean, Center of Excellence for Visual and Performing Arts at Houston Community College
|
| 2010 | PhD | Michael Mehler | "Percy MacKaye: Spatial Formations of a National Character" | Theatre Design, Stage Management, Early Twentieth Century Theatre | Professor and Chair, Allegheny College |
| 2010 | PhD | Rick Kemp | "Embodied Acting: Cognitive Foundations of Performance" | Acting, Directing, Cognitive Science, Theatre, and Performance | Professor, Indiana University of Pennsylvania |
| 2010 | PhD | Jennifer Pierce | "That Within Which Passeth Show: Interiority, Religion, and the Cognitive Poetics of Hamlet." | Cognitive Science; Dramatic Literature | Director of UX Strategy and Human-Centered Design at Raft |
| 2011 | MA/PhD | Meredith Conti | "Stages of Suffering: Performing Illness in the Late Nineteeth-Century Theatre" | Nineteenth-Century American and English Theatre, American theatre and firearms, acting, directing, dramaturgy, stage combat choreography | Associate Professor, University of Buffalo |
| 2012 | MA | Kellen Hoxworth | "Tour(ist)ing Post-Apartheid South African Theatre: The Works of Brett Bailey, Yael Farber, and Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom in (Inter)National Production" | Formations of race and coloniality, particularly in the transhistorical performance networks of the global south | Assistant Professor Department of Theatre and Dance University at Buffalo, SUNY |
| 2012 | PhD | Devin Malcolm | "An Actor Remembers: Memory's Role in the Training of the United States Actor" | Acting | Consulting Advisor for the Performing Arts at the Giving Collaborative, Actor |
| 2012 | PhD | Insoo Lee | "Reading and Writing as Transformative Action in Maria Irene Fornes' and Adrienne Kennedy's Plays." | Woman and Writing | |
| 2013 | PhD | Ryan Howe | "Performing ‘Dubya’: George W. Bush Narratives on the Political and Theatrical Stages." | Presidental Performances | |
| 2013 | PhD | Diana Calderazzo | "My Arm Is Complete": A Cognitive Approach to Gestural Life in Stephen Sondheim's Musical Genres" | Cognitive Psychology and Drama Therapy |
Dresser and Costume Day Worker at Theatrical Wardrobe Local 764
Training Session Participant at Fordham University
|
| 2013 | PhD | Thomas Costello | "Staging Ireland's Yanks: American Characters in Contemporary Irish Theatre" | Irish theatre and performance | Associate Professor, Duchess Community College |
| 2013 | MA/PhD | Robert Chip Crane | "From Kamchatka to Georgia: The Blue Blouse Movement and Early Soviet Spatial Practice" | Russian theatre and performance |
Adjunct at Florida State University and Valdosta Stage University
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| 2013 | PhD | Melissa Porterfield | "The Festive Remembrance of Shakespeare: A Comparative Study of Mission, Identity, and Rhetoric of Three American Shakespeare Companies" | Shakespeare, American theatre | Lecturer, Valdosta State University |
| 2013 | PhD | Grant Williams | "Hollow Men: Subordinate Masculinities in Contemporary American Drama." | Theatre; Gender Studies, Masculinity |
Assistant Professor
University of Indianapolis
|
| 2014 | PhD | Kristi Good | "'Blown Off the Road of Life by History's Hungry Breezes': Sebastian Barry as Therapist and Witness" | Theatre of Trauma and Dramaturgy |
Assistant Professor,
Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama
|
| 2014 | PhD | Ariel Nereson | "Feeling History: Emotion, Performance, and Meaning-Making in Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company" | Bodies in motion working across dance and theater, Choreography, dramaturgy | Asociate Professor, University of Buffalo |
| 2014 | PhD | David Peterson | "Clowning on and through Shakepeare: Late 20th and arly 21st Century Clowning's Tactical Use in Shakespeare Performance" | Clowning, Shakespeare Performance, Puppetry, Theatre for Young Audiences, Circus History | Assistant Professor, Theatre at Niagra University |
| 2014 | PhD | Deirdre O'Rourke | "Restoring Britain: Performances of Stuart Succession in Dublin, Edinburgh, and London" | Women's Studies, Restoration Theatre; New British History | Grants Officer at Trocaire College |
| 2014 | PhD | Julie Costa-Malcolm | "Virgin and Whore No More: Reinventions of the Mythical Maternal in Chicana Drama 1965-2000" | Chicana Theatre; Motherhood, Nahua | |
| 2014 | PhD | Paul Spike Wilson |
"Collective Traumatic Memory and Its Theatrical Models: Case Studies in Elie Wiesel and Aeschylus" |
Theatre; Collective Trauma | Artistic Director at Page and Stage Theatre |
| 2015 | PhD | Vivian Appler | "Embodied Astronomies: Performances of Telescopes and Other Detection Devices" | Science and performance, practice-as-research, puppetry and mask, and activist theatre | Associate Professor of Performance Studies at the University of Georgia |
| 2015 | MA/PhD | David Bisaha | "Developing the Modern Scene Design Process: Cognition and the New Stagecraft" | Performance design, theatrical space and architecture, and the history of theatrical creativity | Associate Professor, Binghamton University, SUNY |
| 2015 | PhD | Inga Meier | "Deconstructing "The Abyss of the Future:" Theatre, Performance, and Holes in the Discourse of 9/11" | Performances of violence, trauma, and terrorism, Dramaturgy | Associate Professor, Stephen F. Austin State University |
| 2016 | PhD | Claire Syler | "Actor Coaching: Talking Performance in Being.” | Equity in theatre education, applied theatre, and actor training | Assistant Professor, University of Missouri |
| 2016 | PhD | Pria Wood | "Overturning Mammon: The Living Theatre & Symbolic Capital" | Cross-cultural avant-garde, cognitive science, popular culture, and gender within the US, Europe, and Japan during the 20th and 21st centuries | Instructional Assistant Professor, University of Mississippi |
| 2016 | PhD | Rohini Chaki | "Desis in the House: South Asian American Theatre and the Politics of Belonging." | South Asian American Theatre | |
| 2017 | MA/PhD | Christiana Molldrem Harkulich |
"Standing Between Reservation and Nation: Indigenous performance in North America After the End of the Indian Wars" | Performances of and by Indigenous people in North America, drag and gender performance, nineteenth-century performance culture, professional wrestling, the Spanish golden age, directing, dramaturgy | Instructor, Eastern Illinois University |
| 2017 | MA | Clara Wilch | "Entering Paradise, Feeling Solace: A search for affective community and possible American futures through the land of the Chiricahuas, histories of the Apache, and indigenous theory and work" | Performance Studies, Indigenous culture and theory | PhD Student, UCLA |
| 2017 | PhD | Esther Terry | "Belonging While Black: A Choreography of Imagined Silence in Early Modern African Diasporic Dance." | Black Dance; Black Theatre; Performance Studies | Functional Architect at Grant Street Group |
| 2018 | PhD | Diego Villada | "Visiting the Living Museum: Brazilian Roots Tourism and the Emancipatory Possible" | Latin American Performance, Directing, Fight Choreography | Assistant Professor, St. Mary's College of Maryland |
| 2019 | PhD | Maria Enriquez | "Learning How To Do It: Local, Regional, And National Latinx Theatre Alliance Building In The 21st Century" | Latinx theatre and performance, Acting, Directing | Associate Teaching Professor, Penn State Harrisburg |
| 2019 | PhD | Krstin O'Malley | "Performances of Faith: Post-Vatican II American Catholocicism on the Professonal Secular Stage." | Contemporary American Theatre and Catholicism, Directing | Theatre Teacher at Oakcrest School |
| 2020 | PhD | Vicki Hoskins |
American theatre, musical theatre, theatrical institutions and commercialism, dramaturgy
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Assistant Professor, San Francisco State University
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| 2021 | PhD | Nic Barilar | "Moving Censorship: Transnational Performances of Banned Irish Plays, 1957–63" | Irish Theatre, Censorship History and Theory, Transnational Performance, Acting, and Directing. |
Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies University of Wisconsin-La Crosse |
| 2021 | PhD | Shelby Brewster | "Planetary Praxes: Performing Humanity under Ecological Emergency." | Environmental Humanities, (post)Humanist Theories, Science Fiction, Scholarly Editing and Publishing. | Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Public Philosophy Journal at Michigan State University. |
| 2021 | PhD | Amanda Olmstead |
"Who Tells the Story?:Andy Blankenbuehler’s Choreography and the Ensemble Body" |
Musical theatre history, dance studies, embodied dramaturgy, choreography, and performance studies |
Adjunct Instructor, Carnegie Mellon University & University of Pittsburgh |
| 2022 | PhD | Courtney E. Colligan | "Freedom is a Practice: Postcarceral Performance in the United Kingdom and the United States" | Carceral performances, museum studies, queer theory, Early Modern performance |
Assistant Teacing Professor, University of Pittsburgh |
| 2023 | PhD | Eiland Le'Mil | "The Black Archives: Fugitive Histories on the Run" | Theatre and Performance, Black Studies, and Cultural Production |
Assistant Professor of Theatre History at Illinois State University |
| 2023 | PhD | Christopher Staley | “What’s the Point? Multipodal Orbits in the Suzuki Method if Actor Training.” | Suzuki Method of Actor Training, Viewpoints, Stanislavskian Active Analysis, cognitive science, existential psychology, Japanese Theatre |
Assistant Professor of Movement, Texas Tech University |
| 2023 | PhD | Andrea Gunoe | "March of Militarism: Contemporary Nationalism Through Military Spectacle" | Performance in the Military, Masculinity Studies, Affect, Directing | Assistant Professor, Limited Term, Kennesaw State University |