TUFTS UNIVERSITY - Key Persons
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- Professor, MiraCosta College
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- Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts, University of Connecticut
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- Lecturer
- Lecturer, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
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- Associate Professor and past Director of the Dance Program
- Associate Professor Emerita
- Associate Professor Emerita, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
Biography
Alice E. Trexler (1978-2012) is an Emerita Associate Professor and past Director of the Dance Program. She holds a Ph.D. from NYU. She taught courses in creative process, composition, performance, dance cultures, physical theater, and interdisciplinary studies. She offered both applied and theoretical courses and created performances in liberal arts settings such as Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, and Tufts for forty years. She also produced and choreographed experimental dance in New York, Philadelphia and Boston in the seventies and eighties, training at and with The Graham School, Cunningham Studio, Luigi's, Leon Collins Studio, Richard Bull, and Nancy Stark Smith. She performed with Richard Bull's New York Chamber Dance Group, The Mosaic Dance Group of Philadelphia, and in musical theatre summer stock. A past member of the American Dance Guild Board of Directors, she directed the ADG national conference in 1988, and has also presented at NDA, NDEO, and other national conferences. Her dance writing has appeared in various periodicals. She was involved in interdisciplinary teaching with Biology Professor Francie Chew for fifteen years, having participated in the creation of the first course for the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies and, later, a cross-listed American Studies course--Viewing African American Dance: Perspectives from Art and Science. Alice Trexler headed and served on many Tufts Arts and Sciences Committees. In May 2011, she received the Seymour O. Simches Award for distinguished teaching and advising, and in April 2012, the Dance Studies Award was named for her.
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- Assistant Professor, Theatre, Boston Conservatory
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- Staff Assistant
- Assistant for the Department of Theater
Alyssa Tsuyuki (They/She) is the Staff Assistant for the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies.They received their B.A. in Physics and Music from Mount Holyoke College in 2022, and have previously worked at Amherst College as the Graduate Associate in Music. Alyssa works with the Department Coordinator to oversee day-to-day operations of the TDPS Department, coordinate department programs and projects, as well as help with planning and logistics for meetings and special events.
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- Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and Leadership, Virginia Tech University
Amelia Rose Estrada is a queer, Latina-Jewish interdisciplinary artist and Ph.D. Candidate in the Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies Department. Her dissertation research examines how dance participates in the cultural and national imaginary of Dominicanidad in Dominican Republic and in the diaspora. She received her M.A. in Theater and Performance from Tufts in 2022. As a performance maker, Amelia is interested in crafting work that speaks to identity, gender, queerness, and intergenerational ancestral relationality. Her work draws on methods from dance, performance art, and theater. Amelia frequently collaborates with Elle Jansen, under the company name MELLE., and with Gabriel Mata. Her choreography has been presented at The Kennedy Center (co-choreographed with Gabriel Mata), The Rockwell (co-directed/choreographed with Elle Jansen), Arrow Street Arts, University Settlement in NYC, SPACE in Portland, Maine, and at Cuerpo Mediado Festival de Videodanza in Rosario, Argentina, among others. As a theater creative, she co-choreographed CarmXn, a modern adaptation of the opera Carmen with Hogfish, was the associate choreographer for Moonbox's 2023 production of Sweeney Todd, and co-directed and choreographed the musical adaptation of Twelfth Night at Tufts in spring 2024. Favorite performance credits include performing with Eventual Dance Company at Jacob's Pillow, with Gabriel Mata at Queer MVMT Fest in San Diego, Romeo and Juliet with the Philadelphia Orchestra, "Dancing Dead" with Brian Sanders JUNK, and with Leilani Chirino at the Outlet Dance Project. For more info visit: www.aremoves.com
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- Lecturer in Theatre at Boston College and Boston University
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- Literary Manager, Coalesence Theatre Project
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- Theatre Emeritus, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
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- Professor Emeritus of Theatre, UNC Asheville
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- Resident Director Open Fist Theatre Company, Los Angeles
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- Professor
- Professor of Theatre
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- Dispute Resolution Specialist, Southern New Hampshire University
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- Theatre Arts Program Director at Boston Shakespeare Project
Bridget Kathleen O'Leary (she | her | hers) is a freelance director, dramaturg and theater educator. From 2008-2018 she served as the Associate artistic director at New Repertory Theatre. Select directing credits include: Heartland, Ripe Frenzy (IRNE Award winner for Best New Play), Blackberry Winter (Elliot Norton Nomination, Best New Play), Pattern of Life (IRNE Award winner for Best New Play), Lungs, Collected Stories (Elliot Norton Nomination, Best Production 2012), Doll House (Elliot Norton Nomination, Best Production, 2011), and Fool for Love. Other directing credits include: Grand Concourse, for Speakeasy Stage Company; Othello, for Actor's Shakespeare Project; The Flick, for Gloucester Stage Company; The Other Place, for The Nora Theatre Company and Underground Railway Theater; Recent Tragic Events and Aunt Dan and Lemon, for Whistler in the Dark; Reconsidering Hanna(h) and The Devil's Teacup (IRNE Nomination, Best New Play, 2007) at Boston Playwrights' Theatre. Bridget served on the Executive Committee for the National New Play Network (NNPN) as the Chair of the Literary Committee from 2012-2020 where she over saw the selection process for both the NNPN Showcase of new works and the Kennedy Center's MFA Playwrights' Workshop. She was the production dramaturg on the premiere of Finish Line: A documentary play about the 2013 Boston Marathon (Elliot Norton Nomination, Best New Play) at the Boch Center and has worked as a dramaturg with the Kennedy Center and Washington University's Hotch Fest. From 2012-2017, Bridget was the creator and curator for the Next Voices reading series at New Repertory Theatre. Before moving to Boston, Bridget worked in Washington, D.C. with the Olney Theatre Center, Theater Alliance, Cherry Red Productions, Charter Theater, Studio Theatre Second Stage, and Phoenix Theatre DC, of which she was a founding member. Bridget received her MFA in directing at Boston University.
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- Lecturer
- Lecturer, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
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- Co - Founder, Double Edge Theatre
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- Lecturer
- Lecturer, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
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- Principal, Braintree High School
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- Co - Director of Women 's Studies at Hofstra University
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- Assistant Professor of Theatre, University of Florida
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- Theatre and Chair, Hope College Theatre Department
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- Associate Adjunct Professor, University of the Arts
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- Senior Lecturer
- Senior Lecturer, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies / Senior Lecturer Emeritus, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
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- Lecturer
- Lecturer, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
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- Associate Professor of Humanities, Fisher College, Boston
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- Assistant Professor of Theatre at University at Buffalo
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- Professor of Drama, University of California - Irvine
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- Lecturer in Theatre Studies, DePaul University
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- Chairman of Theatre at Five Towns College in New York
DeVante Love (he/she/they) is a queer performer dedicated to helping people find inner peace. As a monk, martial artist, and medicine woman, their research focuses on rituals of death and rebirth for queer folks of color. They explore the death and rebirth rituals embedded in popular culture and performed in the Ballroom community through voguing, drag, and modeling-highlighting the ways these different modes influence each other. Their work intersects queer theory, dance studies, affect theory, ritual studies, performance studies, blending reflections from their private spiritual practice and rehearsals with those of the drag/Ballroom scene in New England, Bay Area, and East Asia. Their meditations on these topics have been featured in *The Creative Lifebook 1* (2023), *Applied Theatre and Gender Justice* (2024), *QED* (2024), TEDx (2023), *Out Magazine* (2023), Pop Culture Association (2023), Creating Change (2024), and CBS News (2022). Before joining Tufts, they completed an MA in clinical psychology from Columbia University's Teachers College and an artistic residency in Texas, where they wrote, directed, and starred in an immersive ritual choreoplay called *Healing the Father Wound*. Another passion of theirs is running Healing Kung Fu, a spiritual martial arts school where Sifu DeVante develops movement practices that increase emotional intelligence and break free from constricting heteronormative ways of being. Traveling the world to perform and share their teachings, they strive to achieve their life mission of helping people find inner peace through culturally specific healing practices.
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- Professor Emeritus of Theatre and Dance, Ohio Wesleyan University
Elijah Punzal is a PhD student and scholar-artist with research interests in contemporary Filipino American theatre and performance. He hopes to examine how these contemporary Fil-Am performances engage with diasporic imagination and cultural (re)memory surrounding how Filipino Americans come to know or remember their history. They graduated from the University of California Irvine with a double major in Drama and Education Sciences, minor in Urban Studies, and departmental honors in Dramatic Literature, History, and Theory. Prior to joining Tufts, Elijah worked at Berkeley Repertory Theatre as the 2022 Education & Community Engagement Fellow as well as Off-Broadway at WP Theatre as the 2021 Data Associate & Gala Assistant. With his work as a community facilitator, Elijah's research interests are largely influenced from their time in LGBTQ+ and API community organizations, most notably with the Amado Khaya Initiative (formerly the Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies), UCI Filipino American Alumni Chapter, and UCI LGBT Resource Center. Relaying a fond memory from the past academic year, Elijah presented on the Filipino Boy's Love franchise Gameboys at the 2024 Pop Culture Association Conference where he examined the franchise's depictions of queer (virtual) intimacies and choreographies of longing within the Philippine's COVID-19 and larger sociopolitical context. Select artistic credits and involvements include: Co-dramaturg for Twelfth Night the Musical (Tufts University Spring 2024), Playwright of duma-dara-ting, or The Arrival (Company One Boston's Volt Lab 2024/Reshaping the American Theatre Showcase), Playwright of Sharing Slices, or The Unfortunate Way I Still Love You (Boston Theatre Company's Queer Voices Festival 2024), Playwright of Children of the Basement (Voices of America Writer's Workshop 2023), as well as Dance Instructor, Choreographer, and Playwright for Tufts Children's Theatre - Creative Arts (Summer 2024).
Elisa (Ayorinde) Peebles is a PhD candidate, creative strategist, and griot originally born and raised in Haudenosaunee territory, and currently finding refuge in the Caribbean archipelago of Borikén. Her research interests include Black Studies, Caribbean Studies and anti-colonial futurity, with a specific focus on the role of Black Atlantic Spirituality in the pursuit of liberation and the production of Otherwise worlds. She earned a BS in Media, Culture and Communications Studies from New York University.
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- Professor of Theatre, Pine Manor College
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- Faculty Associate, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
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- Associate Professor of Theatre, Skidmore College
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- Founder, Public Speaking International
Grace Evans is a PhD student whose research explores performances of solidarity and stagings of neoliberal violence within the U.S. labor movement. She also uses a performance studies lens to scrutinize rats as figures of shame, disgust, and exclusion. Grace received her M.A. in Theatre & Performance Studies from Tufts in 2024. She graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University with a B.A. in Social Studies and a secondary in Ethnicity, Migration, Rights. Grace previously organized for union recognition and worker power in the hospitality industry. She then taught students at Somerville, Cambridge, and Malden public high schools through the local workforce development board. Grace aims to produce interdisciplinary scholarship that is accessible and provocative for those active in movement work.
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- Executive Committee of Autism Living and Working
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- Alice and Nathan Gantcher Professor of Judaic Studies, Professor of Theatre, Dean of Academic Affairs
- Nathan and Alice Gantcher Professor of Judaic Studies
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- Associate Professor of Theatre, Boston Conservatory
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- Student in Theatre and Performance
Hernan Sanchez Garcia is a PhD Student in Theatre and Performance Studies at Tufts University. His research interests revolve around the digital use of humor/comedy by minoritarian performers to critique, challenge, and circumvent state-sanctioned categories of race, gender, sexuality, and citizenship through memes, social media, or alternative media. He received his MA in Theatre and Performance Studies from Tufts University, BA in English and History from the University of Rochester, and his AA in the Humanities/Liberal Arts from Nassau Community College. Outside of Tufts, Hernan is a comedian and can be seen performing around the Boston area.
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- Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Theatre, Florida State University
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- Lecturer
- Lecturer, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
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- Assistant Professor of Theatre, Vanderbilt University
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- Software Engineer, Capital One
J Michael Winward is an interdisciplinary artist: dancer, storyteller, organizer-working at the intersection of movement, memoir, memory, and care. Michael is the director of Steps in Time®: an organization that brings social partner dance programs to assisted living & mind care communities. He is a lead coordinator of Dancing Queerly: a platform for LGBTQ+ dance & performance artist support. Michael has a BA in Liberal Arts from Bennington College, and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College.
Job Titles:
- Senior Lecturer and Director of Dance
- Senior Lecturer, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies / Director of the Dance Program, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
Jaclyn Waguespack holds an MFA in Dance Performance from The Ohio State University and a B.A. in Mathematics and Movement Studies from Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. She has lived and danced in New York City, the Midwest and Ireland, and has enjoyed recent collaborations with Daniel McCusker, Alice Trexler, Meghan McLyman, Kristen Duffy Young, Annie Kloppenberg, Jeremy Nelson and Colleen Leonardi. In addition to teaching at Tufts, she makes her own work and teaches modern dance, jazz, hip hop, improvisation and composition to students in the Greater Boston area.
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- Designer and Editor, Sesquiotica.Com, Toronto
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- Lecturer Emeritus, Boston Conservatory
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- Assistant Professor of Theatre, Colorado State University
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- Theatre and Chair, Department of Performing Arts, Roger Williams University
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- Professor of the Practice
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- Lecturer
- Lecturer, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
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- Theatre Director and Arts Department Chair, Boston Collegiate Charter School
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- Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre, Williams College
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- Independent Senior Advisor and Trustee
Jo Michael Rezes (they/them) is a nonbinary theatremaker & transmedia artist in Greater Boston dedicated to the development of new, queer works which feature transgender artists and fabulously grotesque aesthetics. Selected acting credits: Rocky Horror Show (Entropy Theatre); Nosferatu, The Vampyr (Sparkhaven Theatre); The Inheritance (SpeakEasy Stage-Elliot Norton Award, Outstanding Ensemble); Things I Know to Be True (Great Barrington Public Theater-Berkshire Theater Critics Award Nominee, Outstanding Supporting Actor; Broadway World Award, Honorable Mention). Directing: Trans [Plays] of Remembrance (HowlRound.TV); Cloud 9 (AD, The Nora - Elliot Norton Award, Outstanding Direction); Melancholy Play (Vassar College);
The Interrobangers (Tufts University); The Rocky Horror Show (Central Square Theater); Queer Voices Festival (Boston Theater Company, Spring 2024). Jo instructs gender and performance courses across the country (Yale Dramatic Association, UMass Law, Tufts, The Theater Offensive) and serves as a contributor & gender consultant nationwide with the Gender Explosion Initiative at StageSource. Their TEDTalk, A Playful Exploration of Gender Performance, is available online! Jo is developing a monograph, Fractals: Nonbinary Acting Methods, and facilitates workshops on the topic. At Tufts, Jo has instructed Introduction to Acting, Public Speaking, and Devised Performance through TDPS, and they teach Camp: Humor, Bad Taste, Cult-Classics through the Tufts Experimental College. Their dissertation project, "Tastes Like AIDS: Sweet Aesthetics, Bitter Humor, and the Viral Flavors of HIV/AIDS" prioritizes sensation and taste to explore the aesthetic contaminations of queerness & race on public perceptions of the ongoing, global HIV/AIDS crisis. Jo has held academic appointments at Boston College, Emerson College, and Harvard University, and is the Curriculum Developer for The Theater Offensive's True Colors programs. A proud Vassar College alum (BA, English & Drama) and Ph.D. Candidate in Theatre & Performance at Tufts University. Jo is ABD and open to full-time positions: JMRezes.com
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- Freelance Writer and Playwright
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- Interim Department Chair of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
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- Head of Fundraising, Reutlingen University
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- Lecturer
- Lecturer, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
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- Associate Professor, Department of Visual and Performing Arts, Merrimack College
Katie Brook is a director and producer rooted in the New York downtown theater scene. Her work focuses on collaborations with playwrights and composers in theater and audio. In 2020 she created and produced a serial audio play, "The MS Phoenix Rising", which was released by Playwrights Horizons in March, 2021. As a theater director and producer, Katie has developed some of the most exciting new plays of recent years and has worked for world-class companies, including "The Builders Association". Notable directing credits include "The Cherry Orchard" (Quantum Theatre), "Dr. Ride's American Beach House" (by Liza Birkenmeier, Ars Nova, 2019) and "How to Get Into Buildings" (by Trish Harnetiaux, New Georges, 2017). Notable producing credits include "Strange Window" (The Builders Association, BAM, 2018) and "O, Earth" (by Casey Llewellyn, The Foundry Theatre, 2016).
The innovative theatrical work she creates with her company, Televiolet, has been presented at venues in New York City and beyond, including The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival, The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, Incubator Arts Project, Prelude NYC, and Boom Arts. Televiolet work is characterized by its use of dramatic texts and real-world content to experiment with acting and dramatic form in a collaborative context. Notable projects include: "ISLANDER", presented at HERE with the support of New Georges in 2021; "The Power of Emotion", developed at Mount Tremper Arts and premiered at Abrons Arts Center in October 2017; "Tragedy in Spades: A Crime Documentary", developed and presented at University Settlement in 2016.
Since 2007, Katie has been involved with the ground-breaking documentary work of StoryCorps, an oral history project that aims to record and broadcast the voices of everyday Americans in conversation with one another. She began as a facilitator, traveling across the United States to record people speaking with loved ones about whatever meant the most to them. In her current role, as Director of Production, she has led numerous projects, including a revamp of the StoryCorps podcast, an original music commissioning project, and an Emmy award winning collaboration with PBS Frontline.
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- Assistant Director of the Academic Resource Center
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- Professor of Theatre, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
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- Professor of the Practice
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- Director of the Core Curriculum, Boston University
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- Parochial Vicar, St. John the Evangelist, North Chelmsford
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- Fletcher Foundation Assistant Professor of Dramatic Literature
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- Distinguished Senior Lecturer
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- Chairman of Theatre, Boston College
Mac Irvine is a queer writer, curator, and PhD candidate in Theatre & Performance Studies at Tufts University. Their interdisciplinary dissertation project, titled "Making a Clubscape: Space, Race, Labor, and Performance in Austin's Queer Nightlife" explores the gendered and racialized labor of identity, community, and movement making in nightlife and performance spaces in Central Texas. Their scholarship has been supported by the Tufts' Graduate School of Arts and Sciences' Fung E.M. Humanities Summer Fellowship and the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies. Mac teaches courses on feminist, queer, and trans studies and performance studies. Mac is a regular curator and collaborator with Texas-based performers and organizers p1nkstar, Turito (f.k.a. Y2K), Thee Gay Agenda, and others. They have also worked with performance, educational, and nonprofit organizations including OUTsider Festival, the Chicago Black Social Culture Map, Honey Pot Performance, Badgerdog, OutYouth, and The Austin Chronicle. In 2019, Mac received an MA in Women's & Gender Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, where their performance ethnography of queer nightlife creators in Chicago was recognized with the department's award for outstanding thesis. Mac received their B.S.J. in Magazine Journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2014.
Manjari Mukherjee is a PhD student whose research interests include trauma studies, gender and citizenship studies, and race and minority studies in India. She completed her MPhil in Theatre and Performance Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi. Her dissertation focused on the legitimate and illegitimate performance practices the Anglo-Indians community between 1940 and 1950 in Calcutta and Bombay. As an academic, she has presented her research at the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) and Indian society for Theatre Research (ISTR) and has published a part of her dissertation with the Theatre Research International (TRI). Manjari is a trained Kathak dancer and a theatre practitioner. Prior to joining the graduate department at Tufts, Manjari worked as an Arts Manager for Mojarto, India's largest curated e-commerce art portal. Manjari completed her bachelors (BA) in English Literature (Honours) from Presidency College, Kolkata; and masters (MA) in Arts and Aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.
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- Professor of Theatre, Suffolk University
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- Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies, Allegheny College
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- Assistant Professor of Comedic Arts at Emerson College
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- Professor of the Practice
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- Professor of Theatre History, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Biography
Megan Fusco is the Costume Shop Supervisor for the theater department. She received her B.A in theater at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2015. She has worked professionally in a variety of shops across Massachusetts as a tailor, designer and teacher and is thrilled to be working here at Tufts University.
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- Lecturer in Theatre Studies, Boston College
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- Graduate Student Affairs Administrator, University of Chicago
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- Core Faculty Member at Tom Todoroff Conservatory in NYC a Senior Associate at Cooper & Cooper Real Estate
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- Postdoctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins University
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- Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, InsideTrack
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- Associate Professor of Theatre, Fordham University
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- Affiliate Professor, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Morocco
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- Theatre and Chair of Dept of Theatre, Illinois College
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- Associate Professor of Theatre, Loyola University
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- Lecturer
- Artist
- Lecturer, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
Neta Weiner is an artist and social activist based in Jaffa. He is the founder and lead singer of the Jewish-Arab project System Ali and the artistic director of the Beit System Ali social educational movement. Weiner has created and acted in several critically acclaimed and award-winning stage works produced for festivals and significant theaters worldwide. Last year, Weiner released his second solo album, "Pinui Binui," written in Hebrew, Arabic, Yiddish, and English. He has been practicing martial arts for over 20 years and is a licensed teacher of Wing Tsun Kung Fu. Weiner's work focuses on deconstructing and reconstructing language through multiple artistic mediums, including music, spoken word, dance, martial arts, and theatre, focusing on the power of performance to feed the imagination and create socio-political transformation and collaboration.
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- Assistant
- Technical Director
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- Professor Emeritus, Virginia Commonwealth University
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- Senior Lecturer, Drama and Performing Arts, School of Music and Performing Arts, Bath Spa University
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- Lecturer, Lake Michigan College
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- Assistant Professor of Theatre, Boston Conservatory at Berklee
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- Artistic Engagement Manager, McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ
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- Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre, College of Charleston
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- Assistant Professor of Theatre, DePaul University
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- Distinguished Writer in Residence, New York University Science Writer, Wall Street Journal
Sarah Berry Pierce is a first year PhD student in Theatre and Performance Studies at Tufts University. She is a theater director and scholar whose work primarily focuses on girlhood, queerness, and fatness. Originally from Mississippi, Sarah Berry examines the ways theatricality and status quo conceptions have shaped the unique subjectivity, lived experiences, and social perceptions of fat girls. She is also interested in exploring representations of fatness on the stage and screen and has presented her work on historical fat theatrical performances at the American Society for Theatre Research. She received her BA from Vassar College in May of 2022 with Honors in Women's Studies and Drama and completed her MA in Performance Studies at NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2023. Sarah Berry hopes to use their experiences as a queer, fat girl raised in the South to reorient the ways in which fat performance is made, studied, and experienced.
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- Director of Syracuse University in Florence
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- Associate Professor of Theatre, College of the Holy Cross
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- Associate Professor of Theatre at CUNY
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- Lecturer
- Lecturer, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
Shefali Jain has been studying Kathak for the past 10 years under Gretchen Hayden and has recently begun training with Pandit Chitresh Das. She has performed throughout the greater Boston and New York City areas, as both a solo performer and a dancer in group ensembles, including performing with the Chitresh Das Dance Company in its Boston production of "Sita Haran". Shefali is also committed to passing the tradition of Kathak down to the next generations, teaching first at Yale University while she was a student there and now at the Chhandika Academy of Creative Arts as a senior instructor and co-director of the Chhandika Youth Ensemble.
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- Founder, Double Edge Theatre
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- Lecturer
- Choreographer
- Lecturer, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
Stav Marin is a choreographer, dancer, and performer based in Jaffa. Marin is recognized with the prestigious Ministry of Culture Award. She served as the Artistic Director of the Intimadance Festival in Tel Aviv and has worked on numerous dance and theater productions globally. Marin has collaborated with various international choreographers, dance companies, and artists. Marin's work focuses on the intersections of verbal, oral, and body language, emphasizing the dynamics of gender and subject formation in Hebrew. Her research analyzes portrayals and conceptions of the female body in Hebrew contexts while investigating the connections between body, voice, and text.
Steve Drum is a PhD candidate at Tufts. His research interests include celebrity performance, film history, and LGBTQ popular entertainments. He has presented his work at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the International Celebrity Studies Conference, the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association, and the Northeast Modern Language Association. Steve works as a Writing and Public Speaking consultant for the Academic Resource Center at Tufts. He also serves as chair for the Academic and Career Development committee in Tufts' Graduate Student Council. He earned a BFA in Drama from New York University and an MA in Cinema Studies from Savannah College of Art and Design.
Sung-Min Kim is an MA/PhD student who received a BA from Tufts University in both American Studies and Art History with a focus on Asian American Studies and art created by marginalized communities. Sung-Min grew up transnationally between South Korea and the United States and her research stems from her bodily experience of being in flight and searching for landing as an immigrant in a settler nation. Sung-Min has a deep relationship with Boston Chinatown where she worked as a project manager, researcher, and youth worker. In a multimedia art project called "Washing," Sung-Min worked with artist Lily Xie to showcase community stories and the legacy of the I-93 and I-90 highways built through Boston Chinatown. "Washing" received the MIT Transmedia Storytelling Initiative Grant to recreate the art installation online, in which Sung-Min's research was put directly in conversation with resident quotes, creating a collage of oral history and historical/theoretical research. Like so, Sung-Min seeks to ground her research in community and vice versa. Sung-Min's research interests include performances of belonging by Asian Americans in the context of US settler colonialism, asociality and invisibility as critical performance, and the sky as a site of transformation for Asian American bodies in flight.
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- Assistant Professor of Theatre at Salve Regina University
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- Director of Film and Media Studies
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- Distinguished Senior Lecturer
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- Visiting Assistant Professor, Trinity College
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- Professor, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, Saudi Arabia
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- Associate Lecturer, University of Massachusetts - Boston
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- Senior Instructor in Classics, Case Western Reserve University
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- Theatre Emeritus, Messiah College
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- Associate Professor of Theatre, Connecticut College
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- Grantwriter, Windhover Performing Arts Center
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- Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship Chicago Booth, University of Chicago
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- Associate Professor and Chair of Drama Creation and Application, National University of Taiwan
Wenxuan Xue is a PhD candidate, artist, dramaturg, and curator. They teach and research Asian diasporic performance, gender and sexuality, and decolonial ecologies. They are currently working on their dissertation, tentatively titled Ancestral Fabulation: Unruly Return and Performance across Asian/America, attending to how Asian North American artists mythologize and fabulate their diasporic lineage, ancestral spirits, and place-based relations through contemporary performance, ritual, and storytelling practices. Wenxuan is an Advanced Doctoral/Dissertation-Level Fellow at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer (BBQ+) Studies and a Graduate Research Fellow at Tufts University Art Galleries. They co-founded the Graduate Humanities Circle (GHC), an interdisciplinary graduate-led working group on the studies of race, gender, sexuality, and empire. As an interdisciplinary artist, they have worked closely with CHUANG Stage, Company One, The Orchard Project, The Lark, and ArtsEmerson.
Whitney Brady-Guzmán is a PhD student whose research includes resource extraction, cultural citizenship, and depictions of national prosperity in Latin America. Current work examines how cultural heritage sites in Mexico are oriented around strategic performances of nationhood, colonial legacy, race, and territory. She received a BA in Drama and Religion from Vassar College, and an MA from Tufts University with a thesis titled "Processing the Pain of Others: Witnessing Semana Santa Penitents in Taxco Through Procession." She is serving as the ATHE Latinx, Indigenous, and the Americas Focus Group Graduate Student Representative throughout the 2021-2023 academic years. Whitney is also an award-winning lighting designer who has worked professionally throughout the northeastern United States.