Graduate Group Faculty

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

Professor Brandi Wilkins Catanese

Brandi Wilkins Catanese

Associate Professor, Departments of African American Studies and Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Ph.D. Stanford University; African-American drama and theater.

Professor Abigail De Kosnik

Abigail De Kosnik

Associate Professor, Berkeley Center for New Media and Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Ph.D. Northwestern University; technology and performance; artistic appropriation and remix; ethnicity, gender, and digital culture; cultural studies; subcultures and fan cultures; marxism and post-structuralism.

Professor Timmia Hearn DeRoy

Timmia Hearn DeRoy

Assistant Professor, Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Ph.D. University of Kansas; anti-colonial theater practice; Caribbean theater; social justice; disability justice; practice as research.

Professor Julia Fawcett

Julia Fawcett

Associate Professor, Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Ph.D. Yale University; restoration and 18th century theater and performance, performance historiography, intersections between literature and performance, autobiographical performance, urban space, celebrity, gender, and disability studies.

Professor Shannon Jackson

Shannon Jackson

Professor, Departments of Rhetoric and Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Ph.D. Northwestern University; Performance Studies; contemporary theater; American cultural history and performance historiography; adaptation.

Professor Roshanak Kheshti

Roshanak Kheshti

Associate Professor, Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies: Ph.D. University of California, Santa Cruz; queer and race theory; intersection of sound, the senses, film and performance studies. 

Professor SanSan Kwan

SanSan Kwan

Professor, Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies: Ph.D. New York University; dance studies; Asian American studies; cultural geography; theories of space and kinesthesia, interculturalism, dance technique.

Professor Angela Marino

Angela Marino

Associate Professor, Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Ph.D., New York University; politics and performance in the Americas; Latin/o American performance and dramatic literature; popular fiesta and carnival theory.

Professor Shannon Steen

Shannon Steen

Associate Professor, Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Ph.D. Stanford University; performance and critical race studies (especially the intersection of African and Asian American histories), American studies, globalization and American urban development, and post/modernisms.


Core Faculty in Other Departments

Laura E. Pérez

Laura E. Pérez

Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies; Ph.D. Harvard University; Post-1965 U.S. Latina/o visual, performance, and literary arts; U.S. women of color feminist, queer thought; cultural studies; decolonial aesthetics and decolonial spiritualities.

Juana María Rodríguez

Juana María Rodríguez

Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies; Ph.D. UC Berkeley; queer theory and cultural activism; Latin@ popular cultures; performance studies; critical race theory; sex and sexuality studies; technology and media arts.

Miryam Sas

Miryam Sas

Professor, Departments of Comparative Literature and Film Studies; Ph.D. Yale University; 20th century poetry; Japanese experimental theater and dance; memory and trauma; mass media and cultural studies; film.

Mary Anne Smart

Mary Anne Smart

Professor, Department of Music; Ph.D. Cornell University; opera; music and gender; music and politics; historical acting and staging; live performance and technology in contemporary opera.

Trinh T. Minh-ha

Trinh T. Minh-ha

Professor, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies; Ph.D. University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana; feminist theory; film theory and production; comparative literary and art theory; cultural politics; third world arts and politics.

Sophie Volpp

Sophie Volpp

Professor, Departments of Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages and Cultures; Ph.D. Harvard University; classical Chinese performance, Chinese literature of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, history of performance, gender theory, the history of sexuality, and the representation of material culture.

Alexai Yurchak

Alexei Yurchak

Professor, Department of Anthropology; Ph.D. Duke University; theories of discourse, power and performance, the politics of aesthetics, irony and ideology, contemporary media, Russian informal art, Soviet state socialism and postsocialism, cities and urban space.


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.