Outstanding Book
Award, given by the Association for Theatre in
Higher Education
in 2012 for
Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery
to
Civil Rights. In the 2012 ATHE conference program, the prize committee
called Racial Innocence "a historiographic tour de force... a classic."
Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize, given by the New
England American Studies
Association
in 2012 for Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery
to
Civil Rights.
The
Outstanding Article Award, given by the Association for Theatre
in Higher
Education for
"scholarship marked by methodological
sophistication, complex and critical engagement with dramatic texts and
performances, focussed inquiries, and possible directions for future scholarship
in a particular area."
Awarded in 2010 for
"Dances
with
Things:
Material Culture and the Performance of Race" (Social Text 101
[December
2009]).
Mellon Seminar in Writing Performance History, Yale University,
2003
Gene
Wise-Warren Susman Prize. Awarded in 2001 for the best paper presented by a
graduate student at the
annual conference of the American Studies Association
Voted a "favorite professor" by Harvard College Class of 2012 and invited to
publish a letter in the 2012 yearbook
Grantee,
Open Gate Funding to bring
performance artist Tim Miller to
perform and speak at Harvard, November 2009
Grantee, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Tenure-Track Faculty Publication
Fund to support inclusion of 60 images in monograph, Racial Innocence:
Performing American Childhood in Black and White (New York University Press),
2009
Awardee, Clark Fund for Research Support, 2008
Awardee, Gordon Gray
Faculty Grant for Writing Pedagogy for committee to create a guide
for
senior thesis-writers in the Program of Studies of Women, Gender and
Sexuality,
2007
Grantee, Course
Innovation Funds to support roundtable discussion, “Legends in Queer
Performance:
Can Theater
Change the World?,” October 2007.
Faculty
Ally of the Year, The Harvard Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender
and Supporters Alliance (now the QSA), Harvard University, 2005
Award, John Perry Miller Fund, Yale University, Summer 2004
Graduate Fellowship, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University,
Summer 2004
(declined)
University Dissertation Fellowship, Yale University, 2003-2004
Graduate Fellowship, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University, Fall
2002
John F. Enders Research Grant, Yale University, Summer 2002
University Fellowship (full tuition plus stipend), Yale University, 1999-2003
Chosen by the
Grinspoon
Foundation as the January 2010 selection for the PJ Library
Program (age seven-eight category). This award-winning program sends
high-quality Jewish children's books and music to thousands of families across
North America. The Grinspoon Foundation produced a Reading
Guide to help parents and children discuss this book.
"Utopian Movements: Nikki Giovanni and the Convocation Following the Virginia Tech
Massacre," African American
Review, forthcoming Fall 2012
(special issue on Black Performance)
"In Praise of the Vernacular: Robin
Bernstein Interviews Pop Icon Camille Paglia,"
The Harvard Gay and Lesbian
Review,
(subsequently retitled The Gay and Lesbian Review) Spring 1996:
13-15
Invited lead article in special issue on popular culture
"Generation Next: Not the Only
One: Lesbian and Gay Fiction for Teens edited by Tony Grima and
School's
Out: The Impact of Gay and Lesbian Issues on America's Schools by Dan
Woog,"
Lambda Book
Report, July/August 1995: 28
"A Literature of One's Own: Am
I Blue? Coming Out from Silence edited by Marion Dane Bauer and
Growing
Up Gay: A Literary Anthology edited by Bennett L. Singer,"
The Harvard Gay and Lesbian
Review,
Spring 1994: 23-26
Sole curator and convener, "Performing
Lesbian
Archives," a symposium plus live performance at the University
of Texas at Austin, March 4-5, 2011.
This
symposium asked, "How can theories and practices of performance
reconfigure knowledge of lesbian histories?"
Participants
include Jennifer DeVere Brody, Charlotte Canning, Ann Cvetkovich, Alexis
Pauline Gumbs, Meta DuEwa Jones,
Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, Kim
Marra, Lisa L. Moore, Deborah Paredez,
Q-Roc Ragsdale, Matt
Richardson, Harlod Steward, and Julia Wallace.
Sponsored by the Donald D. Harrington Faculty Fellows Program with
generous support from the Department of Theatre and Dance, the LGBTQ
Research Cluster, and the Warfield Center.
Speaker at "Knowledge and Power: The
Impact of 'Intelligence' on American Political Life and Culture, Past and Present,"
University of Massachusetts-Boston American
Studies Summer Institute, July 2012
"Future of the Field" symposium on Childhood Studies, Texas A&M University,
sponsored by the English Department, the College of Liberal Arts, and the
Glasscock Humanities Center, April 2012
"Performing History in Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman and Alison
Bechdel's Fun Home," Resoundingly
Queer, Cornell University,
March
2012
"Critical Conversations: The Archives of Race in the Long Nineteenth Century,"
with William Gleason,
Princeton University, Department of English, co-sponsored by the Program in
American Studies and by Gender and Sexuality Studies, March
2012
"Psychological Damage or Resistance? Re-Evaluating the Clark
Doll Tests through the Lens of Performance Studies," The Robert M. Gay Memorial
Lecture at Simmons College, February 2012
"Childhood as Performance," "Spotlight
Panel" of Multiple
Childhoods/Multidisciplinary Perspectives: Interrogating Normativity in
Childhood Studies, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, May 2011
"The Stellar Burdens of Shame," University of Texas at Austin,
Department of Theatre and Dance,
April 2011
"Psychological Damage or Resistance? Re-Evaluating the Clark
Doll Tests," University of Texas at Austin, the Center for
Women's and Gender Studies and the Childhood and Youth Research
Cluster, April 2011
"Inherited
Repertoires, Resistant Subjects: Revisiting the
Clark
Doll Tests as Performance," Brown University, Department of
Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, February 2011
"'A Tear is an Intellectual Thing': The Performance of Pain in
Kenneth and
Mamie Clark's Doll Experiments,"
University of Connecticut at Storrs, American
Studies Program,
November 2010
"'A Tear is an Intellectual Thing': The Performance of Pain in
Kenneth and
Mamie Clark's Doll Experiments,"
Cornell University,
Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance, March 2010
"The Race of Dolls," University of Pittsburgh, Children's
Literature Program Speakers Series,
Department of English,
March 2010
"Black Dolls, Girls, and the Performance of Pain," Williams
College, Departments of Theatre, Women’s and
Gender Studies,
American Studies, and Comparative Literature; the Multicultural Center;
and the Sawyer Library, March 2009
"Dances with Things," Yale University, Photographic Memory
Workshop, September 2008
"Making White Girls into Mistresses: Slavery, Race, and Raggedy
Ann Stories," Columbia University Humanities Seminar,
"Women and
Society,"
May 2007.
“Notable Books of 2011,” panel discussion of winners and runners-up for the
Outstanding Book Award, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, August
2012
"Spotlight on New Works," panel sponsored by the Black Theatre Network, American
Theatre and Drama Society, and Latino Studies Focus Group, Association for Theatre in
Higher Education, August 2012
“Publishing Requirements for Promotion and Tenure: A Roundtable Discussion of Current
Problems and Possible Solutions,” Association for Theatre in Higher Education,
August 2012
Formal respondent, "Foundational Documents: The Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution," Performance Studies Focus Group, Association for Theatre in Higher
Education, scheduled August 2012
Panelist, "Response to The Owls, produced by Alexandra Juhasz and
directed by Cheryl Dunye," Yale
University, sponsored by the Photographic Memory Workshop and the Film Studies
Program, January 2012
"Archiving Performance/The Performance as Archive," panel in
honor of E. Patrick Johnson's Sweet Tea,
University of Texas at Austin, Department of Theatre and Dance,
September 2010
"Just Out: New Publications in American Theatre
and
Drama," panel, Association for Theatre in Higher Education,
Denver, CO,
August 2008
"Can Gender Studies be a Discipline?," formal response to Juliet
Mitchell, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and the
Women
Faculty Forum, Yale
University, May 2007
"Intersections of American Studies and Queer Studies," panel,
Program in
American Studies, Yale University,
April 2003
"Lorraine Hansberry's Life and Work," panel accompanying
production
of The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window,The American Century
Theater,
Washington, DC, January 2001
Co-organizer, "Performance in Historical Paradigms Working Group,"
2008-2010:
2010: with Ioana Szeman (Roehampton University, London),
co-curated
a series of linked panels and
summary discussion
at
Performance Studies International (PSi), Toronto, Canada
2009: Initiated a second annual meeting to convene at the
Performance
Studies Focus Group in New York City (previously, the working group had
convened only once each year at PSi). With Paige McGinley (Yale
University, New Haven, CT) and Sophie Nield (Royal Holloway University
of London, UK), curated and moderated "On History and
Performance," a
double-length panel of senior scholars discussing the "state of the
field" of performance studies as it intersects with historical inquiry.
2008: With Ioana Szeman (Roehampton University, London), curated and
moderated
a
series of
linked panels and summary discussion at Performance Studies
International, Copenhagen, Denmark
"John Newton Hyde's Anti-Racist Illustrations of African American Children,"
Children's
Literature Association, Boston, MA, June 2012
"A 'We' without a 'They': Nikki Giovanni, the Black Arts Movement, and the
Convocation Following the Virginia Tech Massacre," American
Society for Theatre
Research, November 2011
"Raggedy Ann and the Racial Scripts of Book-Doll Combination,"
American Studies Association, Baltimore, MD,
October 2011
"How George Aiken Quoted Artist Hammatt Billings--And Why It
Matters," Harriet Beecher Stowe at 200: Home, Nation, and Place in the
21st Century, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, June 2011
"'A 'Wonderful Defense of Slavery'? Joel Chandler Harris's
Reading of Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
Harriet
Beecher Stowe at 200: Home, Nation, and Place in the
21st Century, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, June 2011
The Literary Management of Reproduction: Raggedy Ann Stories
and the Training of Child-Consumers." Conference of the American
Literature Association,Boston, MA, May
2005.
The Continuity between Good and Bad Taste: James Whitcomb Riley as
Hawker of Patent Medicine and Nationalist Poetry."
American Society for Theatre Research, Las Vegas, NV, November
2004.
"Using Performance Theory to Analyze Racist Collectibles." Conference
of the
American Studies
Association, Hartford, CT, October 2003
Organized panel, "Race and Material Culture: Enabling Objects to Speak
about
Racist Violence"; participants included
Kirk Savage (chair), Cheryl Finley, and Adrianne A. Santina
"Talismans of the Middle Class: Nineteenth-Century Postmortem
Daguerreotypes of Children."
Conference of the
American Studies
Association, November 2001
"Collecting Exotics:
Realism, White Supremacy, and the Critical Reception of
Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun." Conference of
the
Modern
Language Association, Chicago, IL, December 1999
"The White Girl on the Minstrel's Knee: Little Eva, Uncle Tom, and the
Cross-'Racial' Embrace."
Conference of the
American Studies
Association, Montreal, Canada, October 1999
Organized panel, "Staging Racial Biology: The Negotiation of
Essence in Nineteenth Century Popular Performance"; participants included
Eric Lott (chair), Rachel Adams, and
Benjamin Reiss
"'Too Realistic' and 'Too
Distorted': The Attack on Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy and
the Gaze of the Queer Child." Conference of the
American
Literature Association, Baltimore, MD, April 1999
"'Awakened by her loving touch': A
Perverse Reading of Popular Representations of Helen Keller and Annie
Sullivan." Conference of the
Popular Culture Association, San
Diego, CA, March 1999
"'Elvis is Alive--And She's Beautiful!': k.d. lang and the Erotics of
Paradox on the Cover of Vanity Fair," Gender and Sexuality Seminar, Harvard
Humanities Center,
April 2012
"Psychological Damage or Resistance? Re-Evaluating the Clark Doll Tests through
the Lens of Performance Studies," The W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and
African American Research, Fall Colloquium Series, November 2011
"Faculty Reflections on Scholarship and Academic Inquiry," panel presentation,
Calendar of Opening Days to welcome the Class of 2015, August 2011
"Everyone is Impressed": Slavery as a Tender Embrace From Uncle
Tom's
to
Uncle Remus's Cabin," The Gender and Sexuality Seminar of The
Humanities Center at Harvard
University, February 2009
Panelist, "Talkback" following production of Adelheid Roosen's The
Veiled
Monologues,
American Repertory Theatre, October 2007
Featured Guest Speaker, Women in Society Dinner for the
Harvard-Radcliffe Women's Leadership Conference, September 2007.
"'Never Born’: Angelina Weld Grimke’s Rachel as Ironic Response
to Topsy," Talking Shop: A Conference of the History and
Literature Tutorial Board, December 2006.
"Making White Girls into Mistresses: Slavery, Race, and Raggedy
Ann Stories," Humanities Center New Faculty Lunch Series, November 2006.
Guest Speaker, screening of Mae West's 1933 film, She Done Him
Wrong,
Radcliffe Institute, October 2006.
"Introduction to Cultural Studies,” " Against the Grain:
Critical Approaches to Gender and Sexuality (WGS 1002), Spring 2005.
"Performance Theory," Against the Grain: Critical
Approaches to Gender and Sexuality (WGS 1002), Spring 2005.
"Lambda Radio Report" with Charone Pagett,
African American LGBT radio show,
WRFG-FM, Atlanta,
30-minute live interview,
November 15, 2011
"Culture Shocks" with Barry Lynn,
progressive radio show sponsored by Americans United for the Separation of Church and
State,
syndicated to 9 radio stations in New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Alabama,
Mississippi, Texas, and California
40-minute
taped interview,
November 14, 2011,
"An Evening With Guy Rathbun," progressive radio show,
KCBX - FM, (NPR) San Luis Obispo,
20-minute taped
interview,
November 14, 2011
"Queer Voices" with Jone Devlin, KPFT (Pacifica), Houston, TX,
15-minute live interview,
November 14, 2011
Gender
and Performance (General Education/Aesthetic and
Interpretive Understanding 26, previously Women, Gender, and Sexuality
1133 ),
Fall 2009, Fall 2007, Fall 2006
Panel Chair, "Black, White, or Other?: Reading Race, Constructing Childhood in
American Popular Culture," American Studies Association, scheduled November 2012
Convener and organizer, Queer Performance Reading Group, a bimonthly forum for
faculty and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin, 2010-2011
Chair, Vera Mowry Roberts Research and Publication Awards Committee, American
Theatre and Drama Society, 2010-2011
Member, Awards and Honors Committee, American Theatre and Drama Society,
2009-2010
Member, Marshall and Keller Travel Award Committee of the American
Society for Theatre Research, 2008-2011
Evaluator, Boston Social
Innovation Forum, "Women and Girls” " Division,
2007-2008 and 2009-2010 (member of committee charged with awarding over
$70,000 in funding and services to a Boston-based nonprofit that serves
women and/or girls)
Referee,
Rutgers University Press,
The University of Michigan Press,
GLQ,
The Journal of the History of Sexuality,
Theatre Journal,
The Journal of American Drama and Theatre,
The New England Theatre Journal,
The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth,
Girlhood Studies,
The Lion and the Unicorn,
The Children's Literature Association Quarterly,
Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy,
Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture
Panel Chair, "The Child and the New Republic," New England Modern
Language Association, Boston, MA, February 2009
Moderator, "Representations: Looking at Imagined Bodies and Identities," panel
at the Conference of the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies, March
2007
Email List Manager, Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers
Study Group,
2004-2007
Conceived, designed, and co-coordinated "First Contacts" program to
match graduate students with faculty mentors, 2003
Member, Committee to Select Debut Panelists, 2002 and 2003
Co-Organizer, American Studies Symposium, Yale University, May 2002
Single-time consultant to Kathleen Hulser, Public Historian, New-York
Historical
Society,
regarding NYHS exhibit on Uncle Tom's Cabin in American culture,
November
2000
Editor, "Report of the
Task Force on Achieving Excellence in Undergraduate Education,"
University
of Maryland--College Park, 1996
Writer, "Adopt-A-Character"
fundraiser,
Shakespeare on Wheels, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Summer
1994
Wrote 40 letters in voices of characters
from Hamlet (Donors "adopted" individual characters and received,
over the course of the summer, four letters from each adopted
character)
Created puzzles for the
Shakespeare on Wheels 1994 Performance Guide
Founding Director, Bisexual, Gay, and Lesbian Alliance Center, Bryn
Mawr College,
1989-1991
Wrote six successful grants
Acquired, organized, and maintained
over 1,500 books, 150 audio/visual resources, and 20 subscriptions to
journals
and magazines
Co-Chair, Gender and Sexuality Seminar, The Humanities Center,
2009-2010
(with Joyce Antler of Brandeis University), 2006-2007 (with Brad Epps of
Harvard University), and 2005-2006 (with Afsaneh Najmabadi and Judith
Surkis of Harvard University)
Committee Chair, Eugene R. Cummings Thesis Prize for GLBTQ Studies,
2008
Co-Chair (with Nancy Cott and Afsaneh Najmabadi), Graduate School of
Arts and
Sciences Research Workshop, "Interdisciplinary Gender and Sexuality Workshop"
for graduate students, 2007-2008
Organizer of Roundtable discussion, "Legends in Queer Performance:
Can
Theater Change the World?," October 2007. Roundtable featured founding
members of Split Britches Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver, plus the Five
Lesbian Brothers Ladies Auxiliary including Moe Angelos, Karen
"Mal" Malme,
Linda Monchik, Brigid O'Connor, and Vanessa Soto, and directors
Kate Caffery and Adam Sussman. Created 16-page program for event.
Co-Leader, Curriculum Vitae Workshop for Graduate
Students in Gender and Sexuality Studies, April 2006
Chair, Junior Essay Award Committee, Program of Studies of
Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Spring 2005 and Spring 2006
Chair, Senior Thesis Award Committee, Program of Studies of
Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Spring 2006
Co-Organizer, "The Weather in Proust," a series of lectures
accompanied by an exhibit of fiber art by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick,
Fall 2005
Member, Committee to Organize "Turning Points: Celebrating our
Past, Present and Future," Program of Studies of
Women, Gender, and Sexuality, 2004-2005
Editor, Bridges, a
biannual,
international journal of Jewish feminist culture and politics,
1996-2000
Associate Editor/Features,
The
Washington
Blade,
nationally distributed weekly of Washington, D.C. 1994-1995
THEATRICAL PRODUCTION
EXPERIENCE
Directing
"Raid," performance based on 1923 controversy surrounding Sholem Asch's
God of
Vengeance, University of Maryland--College Park, March 1994.
Dramaturgy
The London Merchantperson,
"distorted" by Susan Leonardi and Catherine Schuler from George Lillo's
The London Merchant, University of Maryland-College Park,
March-April
1995
God of Vengeance, by Sholem
Asch, adapted by Stephen Fife, University of Maryland-College Park, March
1994
Initiated and co-ordinated post-performance
discussions with guest speakers Stephen Fife and Evelyn Torton
Beck
Brighton Beach Memoirs, by
Neil Simon, University of Maryland-College Park, November 1992
Wrote program notes in rhymed verse
Playwriting
"Good Food Foot" produced as part
of Feast or Famine, directed and adapted by Tina Thuerwachter,
Live Bait Theatre, Chicago, IL, January-February 1996
"Selected Shorts" opened evening
of one-act plays produced by Avalanche: A Multi-Racial Lesbian and Gay
Theatre Troupe, Philadelphia, PA, June 1991