I am an interdisciplinary literary, performance, and theatre scholar in the English/American Studies Department and the International Literatures Program. My expertise is in global and transcultural theatre histories as well as British and American literature of the long 18th century. Other current research and teaching foci include Elizabethan and 17th-century poetry and drama, the history of the novel from the early modern period to the present, psychoanalysis and literature, and Native American theatre and diplomacy. Thematically my courses and writing explore the complex relationships between writing, theatre, politics, specific cultural and social milieus, intellectual history, personal inscription, and performance more generally—in short, how artists speak through forms as authors and politicians.
Education
Ph.D. Theatre and Performance Studies, Chancellor’s Fellow, CUNY Grad Center, 2018 M.F.A. Writing, MFA Fellow, Bard College, 2008 M.A. Myth, Performance, and Behavior, Koopenaal Fellow, NYU Gallatin School, 2007 B.A. English and American Literatures, Harvard University, 2004
Other
Beyond the university, my creative experience has included opportunities to write and perform for theatres in New York, California, and Oregon as well as for many international art-world contexts, including MoMA, Museum Ludwig, the Dallas Art Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, Skulptur Projekte Münster, Le Musée Fabre, the Liverpool Biennial, the Berlin Biennale, and Art Basel. In the formal political arena, I also have experience staging large public events as a site manager on the 2008 Obama National Advance Team and 2009 Presidential Inaugural Committee.
In Tübingen, I coordinate the ERASMUS+ exchange programs for International Literatures and encourage everyone to study “abroad.”
“Silent Enlightenment: Joseph Addison and Newton’s New Optics,” Silence in eighteenth-century arts, history, and philosophy, edited by Francesca Saggini with Dan Poston and Adam Schoene, Paris: Honoré Champion, 2023 (forthcoming)
“Joseph Addisons Cato und die Poetik der Bewunderung,“ ZwischenSpielZeit. Das Theater der Frühaufklärung, edited by Jörn Steigerwald and Leonie Süwolto, Munich: Fink, 2022, pp. 81-107
“Still on Classic Ground: Joseph Addison’s Italy,” Addison in Europe / Addison en Europe, edited by Claire Boulard-Jouslin and Klaus-Dieter Ertler, Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020, pp. 67-77
“Enlightenment Subjectivity and the Hamlet Paradigm in The Lancaster Treaty of 1744,” Drama & Theater: Festschrift zu Ehren von Bernhard Greiner, edited by Eckart Goebel and Max Roehl, Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2020, pp. 145-176
“Steele’s gendered husband,” American Society for 18th-Century Studies, St. Louis, March 2023
“The Medium is Politics. The radio and the production of a domestic play in Carson McCuller’s WWII novel, The Member of the Wedding,” Politische Ideen in der Literature (1800-2000), University of Tübingen, January 2023
“Art x Technology: Performing on the Cyber Stage,” Curated Online Roundtable, Para Site, Hong Kong, June 2022
“Fainlove: Ironic Sublimation in The Tender Husband,” American Society for Theatre Research, San Diego, October 2021
“The Theatrical King: Staging Civic Religion from the English Monarchy to the American Presidency,” Center for Religion, Culture, and Society, Universität Tübingen, February 2021
“Sublimation, Again,” American Society for Theatre Research, Online Working Group, November 2020
“Annotating Silence: Wordsworth,” International Conference on Annotating Literature, Tübingen University, August 2019
“Joseph Addison’s Italy,” International Conference on Addison and Europe, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, December 2018
“Addisonian Sovereignty: The Body’s Silent Persistence through the Delightful Imagination,” International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Seminar for Early Career Eighteenth-Century Scholars, Università della Tuscia, Viterbo, September 2018
“The Soul’s Site-Specific Performance: Joseph Addison’s Unique Theory of Theatricality,” Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Boston, August 2018
“English, Iroquois, German: Historically Staging Conrad Weiser’s Interpretative Work in the 1744 Lancaster Treaty,” International Federation for Theatre Research, University of Arts, Belgrade, July 2018
“Rome-ing the Suburbs: Joseph Addison’s Cato and the reception of Rome in 18th-Century
London,” Abiding Cities, Remnant Sites, CUNY Graduate Center, November 2014
“Promethean Expositions and the Technē of Existence,” a collaborative international lecture performance, Congress of the Gesellschaft für Theaterwissenschaft, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, September 2014
