My research focuses on the way that people, and things, “perform” outside the walls of traditional theatre, in places of public culture and pedagogy such as tourism attractions or museums. This work is interdisciplinary, mixing the methods of performance studies, theatre, anthropology, media and cultural studies, and history. My interest is in the politics of performance, that is in analyzing the relationship between the aesthetic, kinaesthetic, relational, affective, and embodied dimensions of performance behaviors, and the problems of power and history with which they are entangled. My publications have examined indigenous sovereignty, human rights, climate change, settler colonialism, and global neo-liberalization, particularly in the Island Pacific and Aotearoa New Zealand. My current book project looks at medical museums housing collections of human remains, and asks how they might help us think about historical justice, bioethics, and the changing roles and rights of the dead in public life.
Educational Background
- PhD: Performance Studies, Northwestern University
Specialties
- performance studies and performance theory
- theatre historiography, 19C performance, theatre, and entertainment
- museum studies
- settler colonialism, neo-liberalization, nationalism, state-making and theories of race and ethnicity
- tourism, heritage, and cultural policy
- Pacific studies
- critical pedagogy