Current Students

Highlights from Graduate Program 2009-10 (pdf)

Sima Belmar: B.A. Russian and History, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison; M.A. Russian Literature, Stanford University; M.F.A. Dance, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: Western concert dance training, choreography, and performance; the intersection of alternative body modalities and theories of embodiment and habitus; phenomenology of gesture and kinesthesia; disability studies; the relationship of kinesthetic experience to scopic and linguistic regimes.
simabelmar@berkeley.edu

Marc Boucai: B.A. Theatre and English, Swarthmore College; graduate studies with L’Ecole Internationale de Jacque le Coq: performer, movement specialist, director, and critic. His research interests include American Studies, Arab American diasporas and subjectivities in experimental performance and popular culture, transnational feminist and queer theory, theories of genre (musicals, sitcoms, melodrama, and comedy), and theories of globalization and affect.
mboucai1@berkeley.edu

Shane Boyle: Duke University, B.A. English. Research interests include 1968 and the New Left; Modern and Postdramatic Theater; Contemporary European Performance; New German Cinema; Activist Performance and Street Theater; Satire; Critical and Aesthetic Theory; Theories of Violence. Dissertation title: “Historicizing the German ‘68: Performance, Provocation, and Radical Thought in die Neue Linke”
mshaneboyle@gmail.com

Naomi Elizabeth Bragin: B.A. Dance, Wesleyan University, M.A. Folklore, University of California, Berkeley. Naomi currently researches the roots of hip-hop dance in the Bay Area’s Oakland, Richmond and Fillmore neighborhoods, during the Funk and Black Power movements of the late 1960s through early 1980s. Her master’s work analyzes a group of dances known popularly as poppin,’ considering how dance technique and aesthetic style construct and circulate communities’ knowledge making practices. Her dance style is informed by hip-hop, house, waaking, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latin dance. Scholarly interests: black performance theory, hip-hop studies, gender and sexuality studies, collaborative ethnography, dance pedagogy.
naomib@berkeley.edu

Ashley Ferro-Murray: B.A. Critical Performance Theory in the College Scholar Program and Dance, Cornell University: A choreographer and dancer, Ashley’s pursuits include practical and theoretical explorations of motion capture programming, interactive wearable sensors and digital animation software. She considers experiences with these technologies in the context of dance history and studies. More broadly, Ashley considers digitality and movement from a philosophical and theoretical perspective. Designated emphasis in New Media.
aferromurray@berkeley.edu

Thea Gold: B.A. Music and Electrical Engineering, UC-Berkeley; M.A. Interdisciplinary Arts, Tel Aviv University; Graduate work, Near Eastern Studies, UC-Berkeley. Most of you already know Thea as a participant in many P.S. courses and with ongoing interests in the fields of religion, queer studies, music, and disability studies.
thea@berkeley.edu

Paige Johnson: B.A. Theatre and Cultural Anthropology, Columbia University; Mellon-Mays Fellow; Fulbright Fellow. Currently working in Indonesia, Johnson brings a cross-disciplinary intelligence as both a scholar and performer. In addition to varied pursuits in South and Southeast asia and in transnational feminism, her primary research will develop from ongoing work on the cultural and economic politics of trans-communities in India.
pmj2103@gmail.com

Caitlin Marshall: Caitlin Marshall: B.A. Theater Arts, Brown University; graduate M.M.program in voice at Roosevelt University, Designated Emphasis in New Media: Marshall applies her practice-based and pedagogical knowledge of voice towards the study of what it meant to ‘sound American’ during the nation’s first independent century. Interests include the politics of voice, the aesthetics of expression, and ‘Othered’ American vernaculars at the intersections of race, disability, gender, and ethnicity. New Media and Theater history, voice pedagogy and oratorical culture, Disability and Sound Studies, and theories of melodrama and performance. Working Dissertation Title: “Prosthesis and Synthesis: Voice Science and Sounding America”
simms.cm@gmail.com

Kate Mattingly: B.A. Architecture, Princeton University; M.F.A. Dance, New York University. As a dance critic and evaluator for New York Times, the Village Voice, the N.E.A. and myriad other publications and honorary committees, Mattingly brings a wealth of experience in the analysis of contemporary dance. Her cross-disciplinary approach to movement includes an ongoing interest in architecture, in flash mobs, and in the social effects of new technologies.
katematt@berkeley.edu

Sean McKeithan: B.A Rhetoric and Journalism, UNC-Chapel Hill. Combining his experiences as a researcher in the United Kingdom, in Bhutan, and in southern states of the U.S., McKeithan is pursuing a wide range of sites to explore the changing face of “contemporary cosmopolitanism.” As both a theatre-maker and a researcher, he is particularly focused on cultures of consumption and travel as precursors and propellers of racial and global privilege.
smckeith@berkeley.edu

Joy Palacios: B.A. Comparative History of Ideas, University of Washington: early modern French theater, church history, liturgical practices, and the interplay between religion, ritual, politics, and performance.
Dissertation working title: “The Aura of Authority: Liturgical Splendor and Theater Conflict in Early Modern France.”
joypalacios@berkeley.edu

Ivan A. Ramos: B.A. Critical Gender Studies/Film Studies, UCSD. Ivan grew up on the Mexican side of the busiest border crossing in the world, where he developed, in his words, a “strange bicultural identity.” His research interests include racial performativity and representation in queer contexts, particularly online sex sites and pornography; queer affective practices; US immigration law and the social/legal performance of nation; choreographies, dance, and the relationship between performer/audience on youtube videos; film criticism, art cinema, and popular culture.
iramos@berkeley.edu

Heather Rastovac: B.A. University of Washington, Major: Near Eastern Languages and Civilization (with a focus on Persian language), Minors: Anthropology and Dance. Dancer, choreographer, artistic director. Her research interests include the history and position of dance in the Iranian cultural sphere, how censorship has shaped artistic aesthetics in Iran and the Iranian diaspora post-1979 Revolution, the role of Persian poetry in contemporary Iranian arts, multi-media performance, and issues of Orientalism and transnationalism in relation to performance.
heather.rastovac@berkeley.edu

Omar Ricks: B.A. History, Johnson C. Smith University; M.A. U.S. History, University of Illinois; M.F.A. Drama, University of California, Irvine: Interests linked to performance studies include race, gender, sexuality, subject formation, metanarrative, performance theory, political theory, psychoanalysis, political ontology, film studies, new media, policing, prison-industrial complex.
omarricks@berkeley.edu

Takeo Rivera: Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, M.A. Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University. As a scholar, community organizer, and performer, Rivera explores the relationship between performance and movements for social justice. His research includes an ongoing specialization in Spoken Word and wide-ranging involvement in the role of the arts and performance in projects addressing youth in under-resourced communities.
takeo@berkeley.edu

Chia-Yi (Jessie) Seetoo: B.A. Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University; M.A. Theatre, Northwestern University: Dancer and performer. Research interests include performances in transnational contexts, problems and prospects of translation, corporealities and “affect”, “Eastern body” aesthetics in Taiwan, and modern Chinese cultural performance. Other interests in practice include contemporary dance, film and new media, choreography, and intermedia choreography.
chiayijessiec2@gmail.com

Karin Shankar: B.A. International Studies and Spanish, Minor: Theater and Dance, Colby College; M.P.A., Cornell University.  A vocalist and actor, her research interests include Marxism(s), feminist aesthetics, postcoloniality, performance and visual cultures in South Asia and Latin America, social movements.
kshankar@berkeley.edu

Stephanie A. Sherman: Vassar College, B.A. in Hispanic Studies; Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, M.F.A. in Dance; Fulbright Scholarship recipient, Ecuador, Dance.  Stephanie is interested in studying the intersections of politics, social activism, ritual, street performance and theater through modern dance in Latin America.  She is also a dance-theater choreographer and a published bilingual poet.
stephaniesherman@berkeley.edu

April Sizemore-Barber: B.A. English, Oberlin College: comes with a range of experiences as a performer, director, producer, and critic in the field of theater and social change, with a focus on queer performance. Her primary research interest, however, is in South African theater, museums and visual art as they relate to changing national identities, traumas, and conceptions of justice.
april.sizemore.barber@berkeley.edu

Scott Wallin: B.A., Dramatic Arts and Cultural Anthropology, UC Santa Barbara; M.S.W. Social Welfare, UC Berkeley; M.A. Performance Studies, New York University: psychosocial disability and performance; theories and practice of directing and acting for the stage.
swallin@berkeley.edu

Joshua Williams: A.B. Comparative Literature, with Certificates in African Studies and Creative Writing, Princeton; M.A. Comparative Literature, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.  Josh is a teacher, writer, and occasional actor/director originally from outside Boston, Massachusetts.  His research interests include leftist theatre and agitprop in the Third World; transnational arts-for-social-justice methodologies like Theatre of the Oppressed and Drama Therapy; postcolonial theory and the Cold War; the many literatures of HIV/AIDS; adaptation and appropriation; and questions of surrogacy and embodiment on stage and on film.
joshua.williams@berkeley.edu

Brandon Woolf: B.A. Philosophy and English, Columbia University: Modern and Contemporary European Theatre & Performance, Brecht, Theatre for Social Change, Off(-Off)-Broadway Directing/Producing, Aesthetic Theory, Institutional Critique, and Cultural Policy. Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory.
bwoolf@berkeley.edu

Hentyle Yapp: B.A., Brown University, French Literature & Premedical Studies; J.D., UCLA School of Law, Critical Race Theory & Public Interest Law. Hentyle danced professionally with modern/contemporary companies in Taipei, Taiwan and New York. Yapp’s interests include avant-gardism, colorblindness and contemporary dance; critical race and queer theories; the law, body and performance; disability rights; and citizenship, sovereignty and war.
yapp@berkeley.edu