MA and PhD Graduate Alumni

MA and PhD Theatre and Performance Studies
Graduation
Year
Degree Name Thesis/Dissertation Title Specialties Current Position
1991 PhD Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. "Athenia Sun in an African Sky: African Adaptations of Greek Tragedy" Japanese theatre, African theatre, Asian cinema Professor,
Loyola Marymount University
1994 PhD Lynne Conner "The American Modern Dance and Its Critics: A History of Journalistic Dance Criticism in the United States, 1850-1934" Theatre and Dance Historian, Cultural Theorist, Playwright Professor and Chair,
UNC Charlotte
1998 PhD Stan Denman "Theatre and hegemony in the Churches of Christ: A case study using Abilene Christian University Theatre" Directing, Acting, Playwriting, Conservative Christianity and Theatre Professor,
Baylor University
2001 MA/PhD David Escoffery  "Il maestro ed il duce: A reassessment of Luigi Pirandello's links to the Italian Fascist Party" Early Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Senior Director of Higher Education Assessment, ETS
2002 MA Sarah Andrews     Lawyer, Morgan Lewis
2004 PhD David Jortner "The Search for the Rising Sun: Nationalism, National Identity and the Post-War Japanese Stage" Twentieth century Japanese theatre and the intersection of Japanese and American culture, Directing Associate Professor,
Baylor University
2004 PhD Jae-Oh Choi Voicing Back: The Poetics and Politics of Ping Chong's Ethno-Historiographic Fables.
Globalization and Multiculturalism
 
2005 PhD Gwendolyn Orel "Performing Cultures: English-Language Theatres in Post-Communist Prague"
Americanization; Asylum; bilingual theatre
Features Editor,
The Montclair Local
2006 PhD Maura Jortner "Playing 'America' on Nineteenth-Century Stages; or, Jonathan in England and Jonathan at Home" Nineteenth-Century American and English Drama Senior Lecturer,
Baylor University
2007 PhD Siyuan Liu "The Impact of Japanese shinpa on early Chinese huaju" Modern and traditional Chinese theatre in the twentieth century and Asian Canadian theatre Professor,
University of British Columbia
2007 PhD Kellee VanAken "Race and Gender in the Broadway Chorus" Broadway Musicals, Directing Interim Dean, Chair, and Associate Professor,
Seton Hill University
2008 PhD Michael Schwartz "A Matter for Experts: Broadway 1900-1920 and the Rise of the Professional Managerial Class" Early 20th Century Broadway, class, and labor, Dramaturgy, Playwriting Associate Professor,
Indiana University of Pennsylvania 
2009 MA/PhD Lofty Durham "Jacques Milet's 'Destruction de Troie la Grant': Reassessing French Theatre in Late Medieval Period" Medieval Theatre and Performance Associate Professor,
Western Michigan University 
2009 PhD Stefano Muneroni "San Hermenegildo as a Trope of Rhetorical and Theological Investigation in Spain, Italy, and Mexico (1590-1690)" Colonial Theatre, Baroque, Jesuit Performance Associate Professor, University of Alberta
2009 PhD Gang-Im Lee "Directing Koreanness: Directors and Playwrights Under the National Flag, 1970-2000"
Community-based Theatre; Feminist Deconstruction; History and Memory; Korean Contemporary Theatre;
 
2009 PhD John Jay Ball "Missed Connections: Antony Sher's Titus Andronicus in Johannesburg." Communitarianism; Market Theatre  
2010 PhD Colleen Reilly "Staging Charleston: The Spoleto Festival U.S.A." Festivals; Memory, Performance
Dean, Center of Excellence for Visual and Performing Arts at Houston Community College
2010 PhD Michael Mehler "Percy MacKaye: Spatial Formations of a National Character" Theatre Design, Stage Management, Early Twentieth Century Theatre Professor and Chair, Allegheny College
2010 PhD Rick Kemp "Embodied Acting: Cognitive Foundations of Performance" Acting, Directing, Cognitive Science, Theatre, and Performance Professor, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
2010 PhD Jennifer Pierce "That Within Which Passeth Show: Interiority, Religion, and the Cognitive Poetics of Hamlet." Cognitive Science; Dramatic Literature Director of UX Strategy and Human-Centered Design at Raft
2011 MA/PhD Meredith Conti "Stages of Suffering: Performing Illness in the Late Nineteeth-Century Theatre" Nineteenth-Century American and English Theatre, American theatre and firearms, acting, directing, dramaturgy, stage combat choreography Associate Professor,
University of Buffalo
2012 MA Kellen Hoxworth "Tour(ist)ing Post-Apartheid South African Theatre: The Works of Brett Bailey, Yael Farber, and Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom in (Inter)National Production" Formations of race and coloniality, particularly in the transhistorical performance networks of the global south Assistant Professor
Department of Theatre and Dance
University at Buffalo, SUNY
2012 PhD Devin Malcolm "An Actor Remembers: Memory's Role in the Training of the United States Actor" Acting Consulting Advisor for the Performing Arts at the Giving Collaborative, Actor
2012 PhD Insoo Lee "Reading and Writing as Transformative Action in Maria Irene Fornes' and Adrienne Kennedy's Plays." Woman and Writing  
2013 PhD Ryan Howe "Performing ‘Dubya’: George W. Bush Narratives on the Political and Theatrical Stages." Presidental Performances  
2013 PhD Diana Calderazzo "My Arm Is Complete": A Cognitive Approach to Gestural Life in Stephen Sondheim's Musical Genres" Cognitive Psychology and Drama Therapy
Dresser and Costume Day Worker at Theatrical Wardrobe Local 764
Training Session Participant at Fordham University
2013 PhD Thomas Costello "Staging Ireland's Yanks: American Characters in Contemporary Irish Theatre" Irish theatre and performance Associate Professor,
Duchess Community College
2013 MA/PhD Robert Chip Crane "From Kamchatka to Georgia: The Blue Blouse Movement and Early Soviet Spatial Practice" Russian theatre and performance
Adjunct at Florida State University and Valdosta Stage University
2013 PhD Melissa Porterfield "The Festive Remembrance of Shakespeare: A Comparative Study of Mission, Identity, and Rhetoric of Three American Shakespeare Companies" Shakespeare, American theatre Lecturer,
Valdosta State University
2013 PhD Grant Williams "Hollow Men: Subordinate Masculinities in Contemporary American Drama." Theatre; Gender Studies, Masculinity
Assistant Professor
University of Indianapolis
2014 PhD Kristi Good "'Blown Off the Road of Life by History's Hungry Breezes': Sebastian Barry as Therapist and Witness" Theatre of Trauma and Dramaturgy
Assistant Professor,
Carnegie Mellon University
School of Drama
2014 PhD Ariel Nereson "Feeling History: Emotion, Performance, and Meaning-Making in Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company" Bodies in motion working across dance and theater, Choreography, dramaturgy Asociate Professor,
University of Buffalo
2014 PhD David Peterson "Clowning on and through Shakepeare: Late 20th and arly 21st Century Clowning's Tactical Use in Shakespeare Performance" Clowning, Shakespeare Performance, Puppetry, Theatre for Young Audiences, Circus History Assistant Professor,
Theatre at Niagra University
2014 PhD Deirdre O'Rourke "Restoring Britain: Performances of Stuart Succession in Dublin, Edinburgh, and London" Women's Studies, Restoration Theatre; New British History Grants Officer at Trocaire College
2014 PhD Julie Costa-Malcolm "Virgin and Whore No More: Reinventions of the Mythical Maternal in Chicana Drama 1965-2000" Chicana Theatre; Motherhood, Nahua  
2014 PhD Paul Spike Wilson

"Collective Traumatic Memory and Its Theatrical Models: Case Studies in Elie Wiesel and Aeschylus"

Theatre; Collective Trauma Artistic Director at Page and Stage Theatre
2015 PhD Vivian Appler "Embodied Astronomies: Performances of Telescopes and Other Detection Devices" Science and performance, practice-as-research, puppetry and mask, and activist theatre Associate Professor of Performance Studies at the University of Georgia
2015 MA/PhD David Bisaha "Developing the Modern Scene Design Process: Cognition and the New Stagecraft" Performance design, theatrical space and architecture, and the history of theatrical creativity Associate Professor,
Binghamton University, SUNY
2015 PhD Inga Meier "Deconstructing "The Abyss of the Future:" Theatre, Performance, and Holes in the Discourse of 9/11" Performances of violence, trauma, and terrorism, Dramaturgy Associate Professor,
Stephen F. Austin State University
2016 PhD Claire Syler "Actor Coaching: Talking Performance in Being.”  Equity in theatre education, applied theatre, and actor training Assistant Professor,
University of Missouri
2016 PhD Pria Wood "Overturning Mammon: The Living Theatre & Symbolic Capital" Cross-cultural avant-garde, cognitive science, popular culture, and gender within the US, Europe, and Japan during the 20th and 21st centuries Instructional Assistant Professor, University of Mississippi
2016 PhD Rohini Chaki "Desis in the House: South Asian American Theatre and the Politics of Belonging." South Asian American Theatre  
2017 MA/PhD Christiana
Molldrem Harkulich
"Standing Between Reservation and Nation: Indigenous performance in North America After the End of the Indian Wars" Performances of and by Indigenous people in North America, drag and gender performance, nineteenth-century performance culture, professional wrestling, the Spanish golden age, directing, dramaturgy Instructor, Eastern Illinois University
2017 MA Clara Wilch "Entering Paradise, Feeling Solace: A search for affective community and possible American futures through the land of the Chiricahuas, histories of the Apache, and indigenous theory and work" Performance Studies, Indigenous culture and theory PhD Student,
UCLA
2017 PhD Esther Terry "Belonging While Black: A Choreography of Imagined Silence in Early Modern African Diasporic Dance." Black Dance; Black Theatre; Performance Studies Functional Architect at Grant Street Group
2018 PhD Diego Villada "Visiting the Living Museum: Brazilian Roots Tourism and the Emancipatory Possible" Latin American Performance, Directing, Fight Choreography Assistant Professor,
St. Mary's College of Maryland
2019 PhD Maria Enriquez "Learning How To Do It: Local, Regional, And National Latinx Theatre Alliance Building In The 21st Century" Latinx theatre and performance, Acting, Directing Associate Teaching Professor, Penn State Harrisburg
2019 PhD Krstin O'Malley "Performances of Faith: Post-Vatican II American Catholocicism on the Professonal Secular Stage." Contemporary American Theatre and Catholicism, Directing Theatre Teacher at Oakcrest School
2020 PhD Vicki Hoskins
American theatre, musical theatre, theatrical institutions and commercialism, dramaturgy
Assistant Professor, San Francisco State University
2021 PhD Nic Barilar "Moving Censorship: Transnational Performances of Banned Irish Plays, 1957–63" Irish Theatre, Censorship History and Theory, Transnational Performance, Acting, and Directing.

Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies  University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

2021 PhD Shelby Brewster "Planetary Praxes: Performing Humanity under Ecological Emergency." Environmental Humanities, (post)Humanist Theories, Science Fiction, Scholarly Editing and Publishing. Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Public Philosophy Journal at Michigan State University.
2021 PhD Amanda Olmstead

"Who Tells the Story?:Andy Blankenbuehler’s Choreography and the Ensemble Body"

Musical theatre history, dance studies, embodied dramaturgy, choreography, and performance studies

Adjunct Instructor, Carnegie Mellon University & University of Pittsburgh

2022 PhD Courtney E. Colligan "Freedom is a Practice: Postcarceral Performance in the United Kingdom and the United States" Carceral performances, museum studies, queer theory, Early Modern performance

Assistant Teacing Professor, University of Pittsburgh

2023 PhD Eiland Le'Mil "The Black Archives: Fugitive Histories on the Run" Theatre and Performance, Black Studies, and Cultural Production

Assistant Professor of Theatre History at Illinois State University

2023 PhD Christopher Staley “What’s the Point? Multipodal Orbits in the Suzuki Method if Actor Training.” Suzuki Method of Actor Training, Viewpoints, Stanislavskian Active Analysis, cognitive science, existential psychology, Japanese Theatre

Assistant Professor of Movement, Texas Tech University

2023 PhD Andrea Gunoe "March of Militarism: Contemporary Nationalism Through Military Spectacle" Performance in the Military, Masculinity Studies, Affect, Directing Assistant Professor, Limited Term, Kennesaw State University