Participating Graduate StudentsThe Performance Studies Graduate Student Group welcomes all graduate students who consider that questions of performance - in all its many definitions and permutations - are relevant to their work. When possible, we coordinate our readings and reflections with the events sponsored by the Center for Performance Studies. Our main purpose, however, is to provide a forum for graduate students to share our research and deepen our understanding of the works that define the field.
Iliana Alcántar (Spanish and Portuguese) - ilianita@ucla.edu
Iliana is currently writing her dissertation entitled "In Pursuit of the Mexican Chimera: New Notions of Identity in Contemporary Literature, Film, and Performance." Her work is reflective of her research in the fields of Mexican Literature and Culture. Her interests include, among others, contemporary Latin American cinema, performance and postcolonial theory, as well as postmodern studies.Nobuko Anan (Theater) - nanan@ucla.edu
Nobuko is a PhD student in the Department of Theater. She joined the program from Japan in 2004. She is mainly interested in feminist and postcolonial approaches to modern and contemporary Japanese theater, including social performance.Harmony Bench (World Arts and Cultures) - harmonybench@mac.com
Harmony is a doctoral candidate in Culture and Performance in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA. Before moving to Los Angeles, Harmony earned her MA in Performance Studies from New York University, as well as a BFA in Ballet and a BA in Women's Studies from the University of Utah. She is currently writing her dissertation on dance on the Internet.Galia Boneh (World Arts and Cultures) - galia@iddiandgalia.com
Galia is an Israeli-American, and a PhD Candidate at UCLA. She is currently on her way to Ghana, to implement a performance project with people living with HIV/AIDS. Her research interests include African dance, music and popular theatre; images of Africa; images of white people in Africa; HIV/AIDS; and not last - and certainly not least – the transformative power of art.Nicole Eschen (Theater) - neschen@gmail.com
Nicole's research interests include queer and experimental 20th century American theater, especially issues related to gender and sexuality. Her dissertation will be on contemporary (1980s-present) performances that reference culture and issues of the 1940s and 1950s such as McCarthyism and film noir in order to comment on the present.Ross Joseph Fenimore (Musicology) - fenimore@ucla.edu
Ross is a student in musicology and works on the mythology of the diva in cinema, tv, and music video. He focuses on how these voices construct subjectivities in queer communities and embraces the work of feminist theory, queer theory, and the French [post] structuralists. He was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in 2003.Malik Gaines (Theater) - mgaines@ucla.edu
Malik is a graduate student whose interests include queer aesthetics, race and representation, and strategies for staging leftist and post-leftist politics. Malik is widely published as an arts journalist and performs regularly with the group My Barbarian. Malik received a BA in History from UCLA and a MFA in Writing from CalArts.Philip Gentry (Musicology) - pgentry@ucla.edu
Philip is a doctoral student in the Department of Musicology. He is beginning a dissertation entitled "Music Under McCarthyism: Politics of the Body in Post-War American Music, 1948-1954." Originally from the Bay Area, he earned his BA at Wesleyan, and an MA at Brandeis.Kariann Goldschmitt (Musicology) - kariann@humnet.ucla.edu
Kariann received her MA in Music: Critical Studies and Experimental Practices at UCSD. She specializes in the reception and transformation of 20th Century Brazilian popular music in the US. Her interests also include broader issues of genre-crossing, electronic dance music, new media, and ethics.David Gorshein (Theater) - gorshein@ucla.edu
David's many research interests include Israeli cultural performances, American popular culture, media literacy, and queer theory. David studied Communication and Drama at the University of Michigan.Tiff Graham (World Arts and Cultures) - tgraham1@ucla.edu
dalispace@aol.com
Tiff is a PhD student in Culture and Performance at UCLA. She is interested in individual motivations, traditions, ethnographic studies, cultural tourism productions, and various multimedia approaches (web design, interactive CD/DVDs, video/film, museum exhibitions). Her dissertation examines small town festivals in the Lower Mississippi Delta region. She holds a BA in English with Science Emphasis from the University of Missouri-Columbia (1994) and a MS in Occupational Health with Environmental Health coursework from the Medical College of Ohio-Toledo (1996).Frances Kern (Classics) - fkern@humnet.ucla.edu
Frances's interests include ancient drama and its performance, the ancient theater, and issues surrounding the modern performance of ancient drama.Cheryl Lubin (Theater) - clubin@earthlink.net
A former practicing attorney and graduate of Vassar College, Cheryl taught Courtroom Communication and Debate at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York before joining the Advanced Studies faculty at Taft High School, where she teaches Renaissance Theater and stages mock trials. Her work explores the performative reconstruction of law and the application of juridical theory to postmodern performance. Cheryl has published reviews in Theatre Journal and the upcoming issue of e-misferica.Heidi Miller (Theater) - hrm@socal.rr.com
Heidi's current academic work focuses on multimedia performance, specifically the use of film and video in experimental theater. This interest developed out of her own experience as a multimedia director. Heidi received her BA in Theatre from San Francisco State University in 1994, and her MA in Theatre from CSU Los Angeles in 2005.Elizabeth Morgan (Musicology) - lesadieux@hotmail.com
Elizabeth is a PhD student in the department of musicology and a DMA student in the department of music. Her research interests include nineteenth century piano music, virtuosity, domestic music making, and music and gender. She received her BM and MM in piano performance from JuilliardJeannine Murray-Roman (Comparative Literature) - jmr@ucla.edu
Jeannine's major fields, Francophone, Latin American, and Performance Studies, coalesce in a dissertation-in-progress entitled "Moving Geographies: Traveling Texts and Performances in Contemporary Caribbean Writing." A long-standing obsession is the question of "translation" between genres, notably texts and performances and she is currently interested in how performance studies might help us theorize the phenomenon of blogs and their politically interactive potential.Paul Nadal (Asian American Studies) - pjnadal@ucla.edu
PJ works with Asian American literature and critical theory. His project looks at the performance of queer racialized desires in contemporary Asian American writing, examining questions of empire and diaspora. He received his B.A. in English and American Ethnic Studies at UW-Seattle and also attended the University of the Philippines, Diliman.Katie Oliviero (Women's Studies) - koliviero@ucla.edu
Katie's current research interests include how embodiment, performativity and performance are used in social movements to articulate narratives of (dis)empowerment, trauma and oppression, respond to and (re)produce identity-positions, and configure histories of collective memory and amnesia. Her fields of interest include body theory, performance studies, sexuality, memory, gender history, and the ever-shifting intersectionalities between class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and power.Nush Powell (English) - mnpowell@ucla.edu
Nush studies British literature of the long eighteenth century and is extremely interested in questions of gender and genre. Her dissertation, "The Performance of Authorship in English Periodicals, 1690-1760," focuses on the ways periodical authors find to turn their editorial mouthpieces into full-fledged characters, and the problems those characters can create for them in turn.Connie Rapoo (Theater) - rapooc@ucla.edu
Connie is in her fourth year in the PhD program in Theater. She comes from Botswana. Her areas of specialty are Performance theory, Transnational theory, Historiography, and Modern African and African-American Drama. The title of her dissertation is "Figures of Sacrifice: Africa in Transnational Imagination."Chantal Rodríguez (Theater) - chantalr@ucla.edu
Chantal is a third-year doctoral student in the Theater Critical Studies Department at UCLA. She holds a Bachelor's Degree from Santa Clara University with a double major in Theatre Arts and Spanish Studies. As a Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellow, her focus is on Latino/a Theatre and performance in the United States.Carolina San Juan (World Arts and Cultures) - carolinasanjuan@mac.com
Carolina is a ex-ballroom dance instructor turned performance artist/nascent scholar. She continues to do the shim sham shimmy. Current projects include, “ From Vaudeville to Bodabil: American Imperialism, Race and Gender in Philippine Performance,” and “The Other Minstrels: Transnational Imagination in the Myth of David Fagan.”Philip Scepanski (Film, Television, and Digital Media) - scepanski@hotmail.com
Philip is currently pursuing an MA in Critical Studies in the
Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media. His research interests include the performative and ritualistic aspects of media audiences. Philip earned his BA in Radio, Television, and Film from Northwestern University.Chunyen Wang (Theater) - chunyenwang@msn.com
Chunyen's interests focus on the body's relationship with culture, memory, and history in terms of Chinese theatre in Taiwan, especially focusing on how the different traditional Chinese theaters maintain and transform themselves in the discourse of modernity. Other interests include sex and gender in performance.Qi Wang (Film) - qi@ucla.edu
Qi currently a Ph.D candidate in the Dept. of Film, TV and
Digital Media, UCLA. Her dissertation is on contemporary Chinese independent cinema; working title is "Writing Against Oblivion: Personal Filmmaking from the Forsaken Generation in Post-Socialist China." Research interests include: representation of history and memory in film and other visual arts; documentary and ethnographic film; East Asian cinemas; French cinema; postcolonial studies; Japanese animation; dance in cinema. She has published in English and Chinese on Chinese cinema, documentary, Japanese animation, and modern art in Asian Cinema, International Journal of Comic Art, Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture, Latent Image, positions: east asia cultures critique, Art World (Shanghai) and Reel China: A New Look at Contemporary Chinese Documentary. She also works as the assistant curator and English editor for REEL CHINA Documentary Biennial, New York.Sara Wolf (World Arts and Cultures) - sarawolf@earthlink.net
Sara is a third-year PhD student whose research focuses on activist, queer and feminist performance, specifically in regard to mutually constitutive discourses of nation, class and ethnicity. She also is a freelance dance and performance art critic for the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly , and Dance magazine.Heather Wozniak (English) - hwoz@ucla.edu
Heather specializes in eighteenth and nineteenth century British literature and is especially interested in romanticism, gender studies, and popular culture. Her dissertation examines British gothic drama written and performed between 1768 and 1823. She hopes to make James Boaden and Richard Brinsley Peake as familiar to gothic enthusiasts as Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley.Jiayun Zhuang (Theater) - zhuangj@ucla.edu
Jiayun is a fourth-year PhD student, joining the Theater Department at UCLA from Beijing, China. She is interested in both contemporary performance arts of China (such as theatrical performances, multimedia performances, and installation performances) and the transfiguration of certain performance space as new social space in urban China. She studies the new social space (with the performances in it) as cultural frontiers between the official and the transnational in the glocal China, to examine the porous interfaces between society, state and transnational participation.
Interested in joining us? UCLA students may join the graduate student email list for information about upcoming events and reading group meetings.
