The Graduate Group in Performance Studies is responsible for the Ph.D. program and is comprised of faculty with appointments in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) as well as faculty from a range of departments and disciplines with scholarly and teaching interests in the field.
Core Faculty in TDPS
Core Faculty in Other Departments
Affiliated Faculty
Paola Bacchetta
Professor, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies; Ph.D. in Sociology from The Sorbonne, Paris; transnational feminist and queer theories; inseparabilities of gender, sexuality, “race”-racism, postcoloniality; Hindu nationalism; global political conflict; feminist and queer of color, and right wing movement discourses and practices in the U.S., India and France; transnational feminist and queer alliances.
Charles Briggs
Alan Dundes Distinguished Professor in Folklore, Department of Anthropology; Ph.D. University of Chicago; performing the diseased body and its therapeutic intervention, biomedical and vernacular; theorizing relations between narrative and violence; mediatization and its reified objects; creating modern subjects by creating their “traditional” Others.
Nadia Ellis
Associate Professor, Department of English; Ph.D. in English, Princeton; African diasporic, Caribbean, and postcolonial literatures and cultures.
Jocelyne Guilbault
Professor, Department of Music; Ph.D. University of Michigan; ethnomusicology; Caribbean musics (popular and traditional); creolization; power; cultural politics; nationalism; diaspora.
Andrew Jones
Professor, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures; Ph.D. UC Berkeley; children’s literature; Chinese popular music; East Asian languages and cultures; literary translation; media technology; modern Chinese fiction; sonic culture.
John Lie
Professor, Department of Sociology and Center for Korean Studies; Ph.D. Harvard University; social theory, political economy, Korean diaspora.
Dan O’Neill
Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Culture; Ph.D. in Japanese Literature, Yale University; Meiji print culture and literature, Taishô aesthetics, postwar intellectual history and popular culture, the novel in comparative perspective, global modernisms, and critical theory (particularly in relation to affect and aesthetics).
Beth Piatote
Associate Professor, English and Comparative Literature; Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University; Native American literature, history, law and culture; Native American/Aboriginal literature and federal Indian law in the United States and Canada; American literature and cultural studies; Ni:mi:pu: (Nez Perce) language and literature.
Darieck B. Scott
Professor, African American Studies; Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University; 20th and 21st century African American literature; creative writing; queer theory, and LGBTQ studies; race, gender and sexuality in fantasy, science fiction, and comic books.
Retired Faculty
Judith Butler
Professor Emerita, Department of Comparative Literature and Program in Critical Theory; Ph.D. Yale University; performance and identity; gender and sexual politics; human rights; anti-war politics; messianic gestures in Kafka and Benjamin; philosophical fictions in Freud’s work; gender in translation.
Vasudha Dalmia
Professor Emerita, Department of South and South East Asian Studies; Ph.D. Jawaharlal Nehru University; Hindi drama and other Indian theater traditions; Brecht.
Dru Dougherty
Professor Emeritus, Department of Spanish and Portuguese; Ph.D. Harvard University; Spanish drama, especially of the early 20th century.
Peter Glazer
Professor Emeritus, Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Ph.D. Northwestern University; directing; adaptation; performance theory; 20th century American theater; commemorative performance.
Mark Griffith
Professor Emeritus, Department of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies and Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Ph.D. Cambridge University; classical drama and performance; Greek and Latin literature.
Anton Kaes
Professor Emeritus, Departments of German and Film Studies; Ph.D. Stanford University; modern German theater (Expressionism, Brecht; and the theater of the 1920s); postmodernist theater and film; the relationship between theater and film; theory of film, critical theory, and cultural studies.
Susan Schweik
Professor Emerita, Department of English; Ph.D. Yale University; disability studies; poetry; 20th-century American literature; 19th-century American literature; cultural studies; gender & sexuality studies; race and ethnicity.
Linda Williams
Professor Emerita, Departments of Film Studies and Rhetoric; Ph.D. University of Colorado; popular moving-Image genres (pornography, melodrama, and “body genres” of all sorts); eastern and western forms of melodrama; film theory.
Note on Core Faculty:
Core Faculty may serve as Chair, Co-Chair, or Additional Member on student committees. In addition, they may serve periodically on the Executive Committee (which sets policy, conducts admissions, and reviews student progress). Core Faculty regularly attend Performance Studies program events—the welcoming reception, Performance Practicum performances, the 5th year lectures. They constitute the voting faculty of the Group, and are recommended to the Graduate Dean for appointment to the Graduate Group in Performance Studies.
Note on Affiliated Faculty:
Affiliated Faculty may serve on student committees, but may not chair a committee. They are invited to all Graduate Group events.