Current Students & Alumni

Current Students

• (Elfriede) Michi Barall, A.B., Humanities Honors, Stanford  University; M.F.A., Graduate Acting Program, New York  University; M.A., Theatre, Hunter College, City University of  New York.
  Areas of specialization: commercial theatre and spectacle; theories of transnationalism and globalization; migrant  identities, alterity and multiculturalism.
  Research interests: Asian-American studies, Attic tragedy and contemporary adaptations of Greek theatre; contemporary European  dance-theatre; political anthropology of the body; cultural  memory.
  
  Joseph Cermatori, A.B., English, Princeton University;  M.F.A., Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, Yale University  School of Drama.
  Area of Specialization: baroque theatre.
  Research Interests: comparative modernisms and continental philosophy; early modern drama; anachronism and  historiography; rhetorical mediations between philosophical  and dramatic practices; narratives of (dis/re)enchantment;  the history of skepticism; the self-as-performance;  affect(ation)s, mannerism(s), expression(ism),  aesthetic(ism)s; opera and music-theatre; gesture and  performance; allegory and theatricality.
  
  Amanda Culp, B.A., Drama, Vassar College; M.A.R., Asian Religion, Yale University Divinity School.
  Areas of Specialization: Sanskrit theater; Indian performance; modern drama and the avant-garde.
  Research Interests: Classical Indian performance aesthetics; the plays of Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti; 20th century intercultural dramaturgy; performance theory; translation theory; performed mythologies; theater and religion; contemporary Indian theater and aesthetics; Bollywood and Indian film

• Amir Fainaru, B.A., Theatre Arts; M.A., Interdisciplinary Program in the Arts, Tel Aviv University, Israel. 
  Areas of Specialization: Performance and Performativity; Semiotic and Phenomenological Approaches to Theatre; Philosophy of Language and Pragmatics; Theatricality. 
  Research Interests: Theories of Spatiality and Temporality; Literary and Critical Theory; Continental Philosophy; Subjectivity; Theatre and Philosophy; Presence/Absence. 
  
  Jason Fitzgerald, A.B., American History and Literature,  Harvard University; M.F.A., Dramaturgy and  Dramatic Criticism,  Yale University. Areas of specialization: modern drama, theories of post/late modernism, critical theory.
  Research interests: American theatre, modernism and post/late modernism, the avant-garde, democracy and the public sphere, neoliberalism, spectatorship, Marxism, aesthetics, contemporary French philosophy, musical theatre, queer theory/performance.
  
  Susanna Gellert: B.A., History, University of Chicago; M.F.A,  Directing, Yale University.
  Area of specialization: political theatre.
  Research interests:  early modern drama; modern drama and the  avant garde; mass media and mass entertainment; the  performance of everyday life on stage; food and theatre;  representations of violence in performance; carnival,  burlesque, and circus; amateurs and amateurism on stage.

  Annie Holt: B.A., Dramaturgy, University of Virginia.
  Areas of specialization: Modern drama; English Renaissance drama; gender studies.
  Research interests: costume and set design; opera; theories of liveness, presence, and embodiment.
  Dissertation: "The Emergence of the Costume Designer, 1870-1920"
  
  Ewa Kara, B.A./M.A., Theatre Studies, Jagiellonian  University, Krakow, Poland.
  Areas of specialization:  scenography, contemporary theatre and visual culture.
  Research interests: contemporary operatic scenography;  19th and 20th-century stage design; scenographic theory;  intersections of scenography and screen aesthetics; modern  and contemporary German theatre; historical and  contemporary avant-gardes; Polish theatre.
  Dissertation: "Beyond the Music: Contemporary Operatic Director-Designers in the USA and Europe."

• Emily Madison, B.A., English & Theatre, Washington University in St. Louis; M.F.A., Dramaturgy, Columbia University.
  Areas of specialization: Shakespeare and Performance, contemporary American drama.
  Research interests: early modern drama, performance theory, gender and performance, acting theory.

• Warren Kluber, B.A., English, Lewis and Clark College.
  Areas of specialization: modern drama, theatre and translation.
  

• Sarah Ina Meyers, B.A., Music and Philosophy, Harvard University.
  Area of specialization: opera. 
  Research interests: theories of the uncanny/fantastic, cognitive science, performance theory, scenography, spatiality, embodiment, spectatorship, memory, film theory, the baroque.
  
  Noémie Ndiaye-Reltgen, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris; M.A., English Literature and Theatre,  Paris-Sorbonne University. 
  Areas of specialization : early modern and 17th century theatre ; history of representations. 
  Research interests : emergence and developments of Western dramatic realism ; dramatic conventions  and stylization ; non-Western forms of theatre ; blackface theatre and race studies ; the limits of representability (sex and violence on stage); acting. 
  
  Rosa Schneider, B.A, English Literature, Reed College
  Areas of Specialization: post-colonial Anglophone literature and drama.
  Research Interests: theatre and nation formation; diaspora literature and theatre; identity, race and gender studies; Shakespeare; dramaturgy; political theater; literary adaptation; culture and society.

• Michelle Shafer, A.B, English and Theatre, Bryn Mawr College; M.F.A., Dramaturgy, Columbia University.
  Areas of Specialization: site specific and environmental performance, avant-garde and experimental theatre, early modern drama, dramaturgy, directing.
  Research Interests: performance theory, feminist criticism, ecocriticism, visual theory, phenomenology, mythology, virtual performance space.
  Dissertation: Shifting Terrain: Landscape, Ecology and Environmental Theatre
  
  Jessica Simon, B.F.A., Drama with English and Art History minors, New York University (Tisch); M.A., English, University of Chicago.
  Areas of Specialization: Victorian theatre and the novel.
  Research Interests: melodrama; nineteenth-century realisms; sensation and the sensational; affect; testimony; embodiment in performance and print; mass culture.

• Julia Sirmons, B.A. University of Chicago; M.A. Film, Columbia University.
  Areas of specialization: film, opera.

• Richard Trist, B.A., Drama and Theatre Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London; M.A., Philosophy, King's College London.
  Areas of Specialization: Nietzsche and twentieth-century theatre; Futurist theatre and politics.
  Areas of Interest: aesthetics of theatre and performance; theatre and philosophy; ethics of theatre criticism; phenomenology of performance; text, language, and performance.

• Buck Wanner, B.A., Dance, Columbia University; M.A. Performance Studies, New York University.
  Areas of specialization: dance theory, history, and criticism; New York dance and the arts.

Recent Publications by Ph.D. Students

Minou Arjomand
• "Three Books on Stage" n + 1 (online), September 2010.
  "Workshopping Edinburgh," Hunter On-line Theater Review, September 2010.
  "E.M. Forster's Billy Budd and the Collaborative Work of Opera," Theatre Survey: 51 (2010).
  "Two Stagings of Die Meistersinger and the Creation of a Soviet Audience," Perspectives on Europe 42.1 (forthcoming 2012).
  
  Jason Fitzgerald
  Performance Reviews: Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge (Theatre Journal);  Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays (Theatre Journal)
  Book Reviews : Theatre, Communication, Critical Realism, by Tobin Nellhaus (Theatre Survey); Finishing the Hat/Look I Made a Hat, by Stephen Sondheim(forthcoming, Theatre Survey)
  
  Daniel Larlham "The Felt Truth of Mimetic Experience: Motions of the Soul and the Kinetics of Passion in the Eighteenth-Century Theatre," The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (2011).
  "Dancing Pina Bausch," TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies 54.1 (2010).

• "Journeys into the South African Psyche: Brett Bailey and Third World Bunfight," Theater 39.1 (2009).

Alexis Soloski
• Book Review: "Trauma and Patience, The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art by Petra Kuppers," Theater 38.1 (2008).
• Theater Review: "Breaking Ice: Lokal Festival #1," Hunter On-line Theater Review, April 2008, http://www.hotreview.org/articles/breakingice.htm.

Recent Artistic Work by Ph.D. Students

Minou Arjomand
Dramaturg, Innenleben: Musiktheaterausstellung Bockenheimer Depot, Frankfurt am Main (October 2010)

Annie Holt
• Artistic Director, Morningside Opera; Director, Benjamin Britten, The Beggar's Opera (April 2010)

Susanna Gellert
• Director, You Can't Take it With You, University of Rochester; The Duchess of Malfi, Florida State University; Marat/Sade, Bard College

• Sarah Ina Meyers
  Stage Director, The Magic Flute, Carmen, Crested Butte Music Festival; Stage Director, Dido and Aeneas, Juilliard; Stage Director, Lucia di Lammermoor (Japan Tour), La Traviata, Metropolitan Opera; Assistant Director, The Enchanted Island (production by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch), The Nose (production by William Kentridge), Metropolitan Opera.

Mirabelle Ordinaire
• Assistant Director, Euripides, La folie d'Héraclès, directed by Christophe Perton, Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier/Comédie française, Paris (May 28-June 30, 2010)

Ph.D. Placement

• Ehren Fordyce (2002) Stanford University


• Tamsen Wolff (2002) Princeton University 


• Matthew Smith (2003) Boston University


• Peter Campbell (2003) Penn State-Berks; currently at Ramapo College of New Jersey


• Ellen MacKay (2003) Indiana University


• Lisa Brenner (2004) Montclair State University


• Nina Hein (2005) American University in Dubai


• Miranda Lundskaer-Nielsen (2005) Bath Spa University, England


• Elizabeth Ruf-Maldonado (2006) Boricua College, NY


• Kelina Gotman (2008) King's College, London


• David Kornhaber (2009) University of Texas


• Donna Fusco Kornhaber (2009) University of Texas


• Minou Arjomand (2013) Boston University


• Shilarna Stokes (2013) Ohio State University
• 
  Daniel Larlham (2012) Yale University