introduction dissertation theatre

Dissertations and Theses

The dissertation is the culminating project for the PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies. A formal proposal for a dissertation should be submitted for the endorsement of the Graduate Faculty. See the department's  Graduate Student Handbook  for proposal instructions. The Graduate Faculty will review the proposal. Sample proposals are on file in the department or by contacting the Director of Graduate Studies.

We welcome projects that include archival research, ethnography, critical theory, literary analysis, and performance studies. Dissertation work begins in the third year of the PhD program and is typically completed in a student's fourth or fifth year in the doctoral program.

Recent Dissertations and Theses

2023 – dissertations.

" Relajo y Joteria: Reimagining Family, Devotion, and Desire through the work of Teatro Alebrijes, 2011-2022 " ( Javier Hurtado )

"Who’s That Girl?”: Women Writing Women on the Broadway Stage " ( Jess Pearson-Bleyer )

2022 – Dissertations

" Americanizing Shakespeare in Print: Nineteeth Century American Illustrated Editions of Shakespeare as Representations of National Identity " ( Hesam Sharifian )

"New Game+: Memories Made in Virtual Worlds " (Peter Spearman)

2022 – Theses

"Balancing and Bending in Bling: The Aesthetics of the Acrobatic Latina Athlete" (Amelia Estrada)

“Perform Falling: Reframing Chinese Rural “Left-Behind” Children” (Wenxuan Xue)

2021 – Dissertations

"Cosmopolitan Performance and Its Ecologies in Interwar Shanghai" (Yizhou Huang)

"Defiant Acrobatic Bodies: Gender in the Performance of Ground Acrobatic Acts from the Inception of the Modern Anglo Circus" (Amy Meyer)

"Performing History in North Tulsa: Black Wall Street and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre" (Tara Brook Watkins)

2021 – Theses

"Processing the Pain of Others: Witinessing Semana Santa Penitents in Taxco Through Procession" (Whitney Brady-Guzmán)

"[W]righting the Highway: Black Counter-Maps and American Interstates" (Jenny Henderson)

2020  –  Theses

"Theatre in the Time of Cholera: Health, Medicine, and The Physician's Role on the American Stage 1832-1883" (Mia Levenson)

"Phantacamp: Queer Temporal Ruptures in the Performance of Restaged Camp" (Jo Rezes)

2019 – Dissertations

"Beyond Dahomey: The Legacy and Afterlife of the Williams and Walker Company 1902-1921" (Beck Holden) (Pat King) "Directing btween the Lines: Iranian Theatre and the Aesthetics of Ambiguity" (Reza Mirsajadi) "Homing a Turkish Diaspora: Turkish-American Women's Creative Labor" (Irem Seçil Rell Sen) "Inspiration, Countercultural Aesthetics, and Dissent: The Ilklhom Theatre of Mark Weil" (Irina Yakubovskaya) "Theories for Corporate Theatre" (Michael Morris)

2019 – Theses

"'ENOUGH OF THIS I'M NOTE LATINO ENOUGH BULLSHIT' The Social Re-Evaluative Eroticisms of Afro-Latinx Identities in U.S. Pop Culture" (Stephanie Engel)

"In Solidarity: Queer Appalachia's Zine Activism and the Radical Aesthetics of Homemaking." (Harry Hoke)

2018 – Dissertations

"An obvious caricature: The Consequences of Scientific Discourse on Theatrical Madness, 1807-1895" (Katherine Swimm) Brief Deceptive Rainbows: Cultural Memory in Productions of Tennessee Williams's  The Glass Menagerie ,  A Streetcar Named Desire , and  A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof  (Daniel Ciba)

2018 – Theses

"But What if Instead We Imagine Black Life" Femininity, Performance, and the Black Lives Movement (Teri Incampo) The Man Within: Depictions of Blackness in Superhero Adaptations” (Peter Spearman)

2016 – Dissertations

"Black or Red? The Construction of Identity in Langston Hughes' Plays" (Katya Vrtis) "Forgotten Figures: The Rhetorical Function of Tecmessa, Chrysothemis, and Ismene in Tragedies of Sophocles and Selected Adaptations" (Tiffany Pounds-Williams) "Theatre of Common Sense: Ernie McClintock, Jazz Acting, and the Black Power Aesthetic (1965-2003)" (Ibby Cizmar)

2016 – Theses

"'Am I Not A Woman and A Sister?' Performance as Political Discourse in African American Women's Literary Societies" (Jenny Herron) "Staging as Youth Culture in Colonial-Modern Shanghai: Student Theatre from the 1890s-1920s" (Yizhou Huang)

2015 – Dissertations

"American Billing: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Shakespeare" (Danielle Rosvally) "The American Pipe Dream: Drug Addiction on Stage 1890-1940" (Max Shulman) "Arab and Muslim American Female Playwrights: Resistance and Revision through Solo Performance" (Megan Stahl) "Freaks, Beasts, and Gadgets: Performing Order and Disorder in Early America" (Matthew DiCintio) "Constructing the Sensorium: Neoliberalism and Aesthetic Practice in Neoliberal Theatre" (Paul Masters) "Cultural Improvisations: Luigi Riccoboni and the Nouveau Theatre Italien" (Matthew McMahan) "Documenting Rehearsal for Revolution: Theory, Practice, and Praxis in Theatre of the Oppressed" (Betsy Goldman)

2015 – Theses

"'Of Thee We Sing:' Microhistories of the Northeastern United States through the Lens of American Folkloric Opera" (Christian Krenek) "Spectrums of Truth: Transcribing Reality in the Documentary Musical" (Reza Mirsajadi)

Search the Archive

Dissertations and theses by our graduate are catalogued in the  Dissertations & Theses @ Tufts University  database. In the "Advanced Search" option, search for "drama" in the "Department – DEP" category.  Dissertations & Theses @ Tufts  provides full text for:

• Most PhD dissertations issued after 1996
• Most master's theses issued after 2005

Scholars' Bank

Theatre arts theses and dissertations, permanent uri for this collection, recent submissions.

• 1 (current)

CUNY Academic Works

Home > Dissertations, Theses & Capstones Projects by Program > Theatre and Performance Dissertations

Theatre and Performance Dissertations

As of 2014, all newly submitted Graduate Center dissertations and theses appear in Academic Works shortly after graduation. Some works are immediately available to read and download, and some become available after an embargo period set by the author.

Dissertations and theses from before 2014 are generally accessible only to the CUNY community, but some authors have chosen to make theirs open access.

The Ph.D. Program in Theatre and Performance was formerly known as Theatre. Dissertations submitted prior to September 2018 reflect this earlier name.

Dissertations from 2024 2024

The Village on the Stage: Dramaturgies of Modernity in African Concert Dance , Margit N. Edwards

Epistemic Theatres: The Dramaturgy of Knowledge in Twenty-First Century Theatre , Amir Farjoun

US Theatre and Cosmopolitics: Imperfect Reimagining of US–Asia Relations on Stage Since 1945 , Kyungjin Jo

Beautiful Resistance: Nonfiction Theatre Rehearsal Processes, Politics, and Prefiguration in War , Ash Marinaccio

Working on Stage: Spectacularization of Labor in Contemporary US Theatre , Hansol Oh

Historiography of The Body and Corporeality in Indonesian Theatre: The Search for Decolonial Aesthetics , Mohamad Ugoran Prasad

Moving Pictures of the Past: Nostalgia for Classical Hollywood in the Broadway Musical, 1960–1990 , Curtis Russell

Performing Ero Guro: Erotic-Grotesque Bodies and Normativity in Post-WWII Japanese and Korean Theatre , Dohyun Shin

Strike a Pose: Performing Gestures of Female Madness Across Media Circa 1900 , Elyse S. Singer

Dissertations from 2023 2023

Spectacle on the Fringe: Masks, Materiality, and Movement in South Asia , Deepsikha Chatterjee

“Here in America”: Broadway Musicals and the Making of Jewish Americans , Barrie Gelles

Political Theatre After Occupy: Participation, Interpellation, and the Search for New Subjectivities in the Theatre , Andrew J. Goldberg

“For ‘Their Own Good’”: Education, The Performing Arts, and Social Justice at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 1915–2023 , Anna S. Harb

Transnational Ritual Poetics of Blackness in Performance , Nina A. Mercer

Indigenous Performances in Contemporary Indian Urban Public Theatres: Coloniality, Globalization, and the State , Mayurakshi Sen

Dissertations from 2022 2022

A Girl Is a Thing: Dramaturgies of Objects and Nature in Contemporary Choreography , Fidan Akinci

Staging Retro-Perspectives: Performing Age, Memory/loss, and Queer Desire in the Later Works of Split Britches (2009–2020) , Benjamin Gillespie

Banarasipan as Revelation: Immanent Utopias in the Performance of Everyday Life , Bhargav Rani

Primitivism, Performance Studies, and Modernist Time: Tracing an Alternative Genealogy of Performance Studies Through Case Studies in Modernist Cultural Appropriation , Stephanie Vella

Gay Boy and Playboy Revues: Constructing U.S. Queer Collectivities in Networks of Peripatetic Burlesque and Nightclub Drag Performers, 1933–1939 , Kalle Westerling

Dissertations from 2021 2021

Broadway in the Age of American Idol: Celebrity and the Broadway Musical, 2003–2018 , Emily E. Clark

Becoming Material: Devotional Encounters Between Humans and Objects in the European Middle Ages , Debra L. Hilborn-Davis

A Host of People in Detroit: Forging a Twenty-First Century Ensemble in the Deindustrial City , Jacob Hooker

Dramaturgies of Intellectual Property Law in Read-Write Theatre , Andrew Kircher

Baccio del Bianco at the Court of Spain: Early Modern Scenic Design in Context , Pamela Thielman

Countersexuality in Times of Neomachismo: Representations of Gender in Contemporary Spanish Performance (1988–2019) , Mara I. Valderrama

Dissertations from 2020 2020

The Argentines of Paris: Theatrical Networks and Assemblages , Stefano Boselli

Devising Complicité: Devised Theatre, Neoliberal Funding Pressures, and the Evolution of Théâtre de Complicité , Joseph Anthony Heissan Jr.

Acting Objects: Staging New Materialism, Posthumanism and the Ecocritical Crisis in Contemporary Performance , Sarah Lucie

Reframing the Family Portrait: The Surrogate Mother in U.S. Theatre and Film 1939–1963 , Alison Walls

Dissertations from 2019 2019

Just a Buncha Clowns: Comedic-Anarchy and Racialized Performance in Black Vaudeville, the Chop Suey Circuit, and las Carpas , Michael Shane Breaux

Re-Defining Gender and Sexuality in West African Theatre: Women Artists, Feminist Representations, and Same-Sex Desire in the Twenty-First Century Theatre of Benin, Burkina Faso, and Togo , Heather J. Denyer

Broadway Bodies: Casting, Stigma, and Difference in Broadway Musicals Since "A Chorus Line" (1975) , Ryan Donovan

Madness and the Broadway Musical, 1940s–2000s , Aleksei Grinenko

Embodied Nostalgia: Early Twentieth Century Social Dance and U.S. Musical Theatre , Phoebe Rumsey

Dramaturgies of Democracy: Performance, Cultural Policy, and Citizenship in Chile, 1979–Present , Jennifer J. Thompson

Dissertations from 2018 2018

Under the Influence: Drinking and Immersion in New York City Theatre and Popular Entertainment, 1850 to Present , Chloë R. Edmonson

Being in Performance: A Philosophical Account of the Embodied Actor , Brad M. Krumholz

Wukongism: Monkey King, Kungfu/Jazz, and Asian/American Performance , Sissi Liu

The Theatrical King: Joseph Addison's Invention of Modern Sovereignty , Dan Poston

The Other at War: Performing the Spanish-Cuban-American War on U.S. and Cuban Stages , Juan R. Recondo

The Lines Between the Lines: Stage Directions as Fluid, Affective Collaborations Between Theatre Texts and Theatre Makers , Sarah Bess Rowen

African American Performers in Stalin’s Soviet Union: Between Political Promise and Racial Propaganda , Christopher E. Silsby

“Are They Supposed to Be Heugin ?": Negotiating Race, Nation, and Representation in Korean Musical Theatre , Ji Hyon Yuh

Dissertations from 2017 2017

Nervous Salomes: New York Salomania and the Neurological Condition of Modernité , Margaret K. Araneo

Fit for the Stage: Regency Actors and the Inspiration Behind Romantic Drama , James Armstrong

One Endless Dance: Tanaka Min's Experimental Practice , John (Zack) Fuller

Twenty-First-Century Transnational Theatre Development in the Cases of Théâtre du Soleil/Aftaab and Sundance Institute East Africa: Cultural Politics, Performance Aesthetics, and Global Circulation , Julia Goldstein

Acts of Provocation: Popular Antiracisms on/through the Twenty-First Century New York Commercial Stage , Stefanie A. Jones

The Interdependence of Theatricality, Gender, and Race in Cinematic and Performative Representations of New Orleans—From Jim Crow to Hurricane Katrina , Alexandra Just

Theatre Translation as Historiography: Projections of Greek Self-Identity Through English Translations During the European Crisis , Maria Mytilinaki

Performing Human Rights in Neoliberal Asia: Artistic and Activist Engagements in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore , Melissa Wansin Wong

Dissertations from 2016 2016

Straddling Feminisms: Post-Wave Pop Politics and Experimental Performance , Jessica Del Vecchio

Performing el Rap el ʿArabi 2005-2015: Feeling Politics amid Neoliberal Incursions in Ramallah, Amman, and Beirut , Rayya S. El Zein

Theatres of Reality, Fiction, and Temporality: Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller’s Ibsen-Saga (2006 - 2015) , Andrew L. Friedman

Professional Wrestling and/as Theatre: Bodies, Labor, and the Commercial Stage , Eero Laine

Shakespeare for the Volk : Shakespeare and the Development of the Idea of German Nationhood, 1817–1867 , Daniel Rockhill Siegel Venning

Occupy Citizenry: Participatory Performance in New York City: 2009-2015 , Kenn Dixon Watt

Animal Performance in Big-Time Vaudeville , Catherine M. Young

Dissertations from 2015 2015

Economies of Touring in American Theatre Culture, 1835-1861 , Nicole Berkin

Performing (Non)Profit, Race, and American Identity in the Nation's Capital: Arena Stage, 1950-2010 , Donatella Galella

The Pulitzer Prize and Women: An Investigation into Three Decades of Winning Plays by Female Dramatists (1981-2009) , Kathleen Potts

Dissertations from 2014 2014

Cologne Carnival's "Alternative" Stunksitzung: Carnivalization? Meta-Carnival? Or Bakhtinian Restoration? , Erik Abbott

Ridiculous Geographies: Mapping the Theatre of the Ridiculous as Radical Aesthetic , Kelly Aliano

Dissertations from 2010 2010

Synesthetic Landscapes in Harold Pinter’s Theatre: A Symbolist Legacy , Graça Corrêa

Dissertations from 2003 2003

Art or Propaganda: A Historical and Critical Analysis of African-American Approaches to Dramatic Theory, 1900–1965 , Henry D. Miller

Dissertations from 2001 2001

Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals, and the Mass-Marketing of Amusement, 1895-1915 , Andrew L. Erdman

Dissertations from 1999 1999

Contemporary Romanian Theatre: Artistry, Honesty, and Adaptation in the Plays of Iosif Naghiu, Dumitru Radu Popescu and Marin Sorescu , Eric Pourchot

John Brougham: The American Performance Career of an Irish Comedian, 1842–1880 , Dana Rahm Sutton

The Women of the Ten, Twent', Thirt': Popular Melodrama Theatre in Turn-of-the-Century New York , Barbara Meredith Waldinger

Dissertations from 1992 1992

Acting Hysteria: An Analysis of the Actress and Her Part , Lydia Stryk

Dissertations from 1990 1990

Improvisation for Actor Training and Performance in 20th Century America (with Special Emphasis on the Spolin and Sills Tradition) , Jeff David Brone

Influences of the Post-World War II Era on the American Political Theater, 1968–1972 , Lydia Alix Gerson

Dissertations from 1989 1989

The Theatre of Adrian Hall , Jeannie Marlin Woods

Dissertations from 1988 1988

Feminist Theory and Postwar American Drama , Gayle Austin

Dissertations from 1987 1987

Revolutions Off Off Broadway, 1959-1969: A Critical Study of Changes in Structure, Character, Language, and Theme in Experimental Drama in New York City , Alexis Greene

Dissertations from 1983 1983

The Principles of Acting According to Stella Adler , Joanna Helen Rotte

Dissertations from 1978 1978

Theatre and Drama and the Nazi Concentration Camps , Alvin Goldfarb

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Theses and Dissertations: Introduction

Theses and dissertations are a key source for finding the latest scholarship, additional material such as data sets, and detailed research. They can also help you find out what has been written on a topic, uncover other sources through citations, and get inspiration for your own research project. Use the resources below to search for PhD theses from universities in the UK and abroad. If you're a PhD student yourself, you can use the resources to make sure that your topic hasn't already been written about by other doctoral students.   

Essex Theses

The Library received all Ph.D. and M.Phil. theses and M.Sc. (Regulation 3.5.) theses up to 30 September 2016. Theses submitted after this date are kept in the University of Essex Research Repository . We do not normally hold dissertations and theses connected with other degrees - the exception being LL.Ms. All of our theses are kept in Store and can only be consulted in the library - you'll need to use the online store request form or fill in a form at the library helpdesk to request them.

If you are looking for a specific thesis you can use Library Search to search for the author or title. If you want to find an Essex thesis on a particular topic/subject area, you can either add the word "thesis" to your keyword search, or limit your results to the "Essex theses" or "University of Essex Research Repository" collections.

Theses and Dissertations: Library E-resources

• EThOS EThOS is the British Library’s online service that provides access to UK doctoral theses. The database can be searched by anyone, but users need to register to access theses. Many theses are free to download instantly, and digitisation can be requested for those not currently available.
• ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global is the world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses, offering millions of works from thousands of universities. Each year hundreds of thousands of works are added. Full-text coverage starts from 1743, with citation coverage from 1637. more... less... Shibboleth login

Theses and Dissertations: Free Websites and Portals

• EBSCO Open Dissertations Created from a collaboration between EBSCO and BiblioLabs, EBSCO Open Dissertations is a free electronic theses and dissertations database offering access to more than 800,000 ETDs, including those previously available in American Doctoral Dissertations.
• Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations (NDLTD) Portal to over 5 million digitised theses from around the world.
• Open Access Theses and Dissertations Resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations from universities around the world.
• OpenThesis Free repository of theses, dissertations, and other academic documents.
• Database of African Theses and Dissertations including Research (DATAD-R)
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• Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertacoes (BDTD)
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4 (page 74) p. 74 Theatre and performance

• Published: October 2014
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Modern interest in performance can be traced to several different developments from the 1950s to 1970s in the art world, in academic theatre, and in the social sciences, particularly sociology, anthropology, and linguistics. ‘Theatre and performance’ outlines the influence of this major shift in methodological orientation, which has become known as the ‘performative turn’, on Richard Schechner, in particular, who was editor of The Drama Review . His work with Victor Turner led to the first course on ‘performance theory’ at New York University. Courses on performance studies are now taught around the world. How has theatre changed as a result of the challenge of and gradual accommodation to performance and performance studies?

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