Writing

My first book explores mirthful modes of political performance that inspire and sustain deadly serious struggles for revolutionary change. In response to queer theory’s long-suffering romance with mourning and melancholia and a national agenda that urges homosexuals to renounce pleasure in a bid to be taken seriously by mainstream society, I reanimate gaiety as a political value for progressive LGBT activism.

Honors for Acts of Gaiety (University of Michigan Press, Triangulations Series):

Barnard Hewitt Award for Best Book in Theatre History, Honorable Mention, American Society of Theatre Research
Outstanding Book Award, Association for Theatre in Higher Education
Lambda Literary Award, Finalist

Avant-garde theater troupe, The Wooster Group, used my book as research, and as a pivotal part of their set design, for The Town Hall Affair (2016). This production explores a fiery debate between second wave feminists (Jill Johnston, Germaine Greer, Jacqueline Ceballos), author Diana Trilling, and that pugnacious patriarch of American letters, Norman Mailer. Chapter three of Acts of Gaiety explores this ideological cage match, captured by documentary filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

Selected Articles & Book Chapters

I have published widely in academic books, scholarly journals, and the mainstream press on LGBT issues, feminism, theater and performance, prison reform, and other topics. You can view my complete CV on ORCID.

“Dramaturgical Indecency: Paula Vogel’s Queer Legacy,” 50 Key Figures in US Queer Theater History, eds. Jimmy Noriega and Jordan Schildcrout (NY: Routledge, 2022).

“Jane Chambers” in 50 Key Figures in US Queer Theater History, eds. Jimmy Noriega and Jordan Schildcrout (NY: Routledge, 2022).

“Indecent Collaborations in Queer Time(s),” co-authored with Katie Johnson, in Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Women Playwrights: The Early Twenty-First Century, eds. Lesley Ferris and Penny Farfan (NY: University of Michigan Press, 2021), 50-60.

“Performing Democracy: Bad and Nasty Patriot Acts,” in The Scholar as Human: Engaging the Humanities in Public, eds. Anna Sims Bartel and Debra A. Castillo (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020), 143-155.

“Adages for Ethical Graduate Mentoring in the 21st Century,” Theatre Topics 29.2 (July 2019): 103-113 (co-authored with Esther Kim Lee and Charlotte Canning).

“Tales of the Revolution: An Afterword on the Life and Legacy of Jane Chambers”in Lesbian & Queer Plays from the Jane Chambers Prize, eds. Maya E. Roth, Jennifer-Scott Mobley (Southgate, CA: NoPassport Press, 2018), 419-423.

“ATHE’s Latent Homosexuality: Commemorative Remarks at the 2015 ATHE General Membership Meeting,” Theatre Topics 26.1(March 2016): 24-5.

“Contemporary Lesbian and Gay Drama” in The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature, eds. Ellen McCallum and Mikko Tuhkanen (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014), 607-625.

“Hide and Go Seek: Child’s Play as Archival Act in Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto,” TDR 58.4, special issue on Desire, eds. Jill Dolan and Stacy Wolf (Winter 2014): 80-93 (with Mary Jo Watts).

“A Gay Old Time: Jill Johnston October 1975” in Theatres of Affect: New Essays on Canadian Theatre, ed. Erin Hurley (Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2014), 104-123.

“Chronic Desires: Theater’s Aching Lesbian Bodies” in Contemporary Women Playwrights, eds. Penny Farfan and Lesley Ferris (NY: Palgrave 2013), 50-65.

Guest Editor with Erin Hurley (McGill), The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 26.2, Special Issue, “Affect, Performance, Politics” 26, no. 2 (Spring 2012).

“The Maladapted Hothead Paisan: A Lesbian Comedy of Terrors” in Political and Protest Theatre After 9-11: Patriotic Dissent, ed. Jenny Spencer (NY: Routledge, 2011), 219-234.

“Restorytive Justice” in Razor Wire Women, eds. Ashley Lucas and Jodie Lawston (NY: SUNY UP, 2011), 229-245.

“’A Terror to Gods And Men’: The Furies Collective, The Theatrics Of Terrorism, And The Myth Of The Angry Lesbian” in Myth and Violence in the Contemporary Female Text: New Cassandras, eds. Julie Rajan and Sanja Bahun-Radunovic (London: Ashgate Press, 2011), 19-33.

“The Tender Track” in Feminist Activism in Academia: Essays on Personal, Political and Professional Change, eds. Ellen Mayock and Domnica Radulescu (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 2010), 176-190.

“Rage Slaves: The Commodification of Affect In The Five Lesbian Brothers’ The Secretaries.” The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism XIII (Spring 2008): 21-45. This essay was nominated for ATHE’s Outstanding Article Award (2008).

“Suzan-Lori Parks’ Drama of Disinterment: A Transnational Exploration Of Venus.” Theatre Journal 60.2 (May 2008): 181-199.

“The Medea Project: Mythic Theater for Incarcerated Women.” Feminist Studies 30.2, Special Issue on Women in Prison (Summer 2004): 483-500.

“‘Do You Know What Bitch Is Backwards?’: Mythic Revision And Ritual Reversal In The Medea Project: Theater For Incarcerated Women,” Dialectical Anthropology 26 (2001): 159-179.

“Performance Anxieties: Science, Sexuality and Safe Counsel,” Nineteenth Century Prose, Special Edition on The Construction of Gender (Fall 1999): 143-169.