Past Workshops

Spring 2021

4/7/21 –12:00-1:30pm CT“Theater in the Mind: Transparency, Layered Surfaces and Sounds Rising from the Page”– Honglan Huang, PhD Candidate, Comparative Literature, Yale University.  Respondent: Ellen MacKay, Associate Professor, English, University of Chicago.

* 4/28/214-5:30pm CT“Traversing Watching and Reading: Transforming Riddles in Late Ming Theater”Jiayi Chen, PhD Student, East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Respondent: Arianna Gass.

5/5/21 –12-1:30pm CT– “Mortal Bodies, Immortal Song: Performing Hunger and Revelation in the Turkish “Death Fast””– Asya Sagnak, MAPH Student, University of Chicago. Respondent: Fabien Maltais-Bayda.

*5/10/21 – 4-5:30pm CT – “Skin and Surface: Race Beyond Representation”  – Arianna Gass, PhD Candidate, English and Theater & Performance Studies, University of Chicago. Respondent: Kaelan Doyle Myerscough. Co-presented with the Digital Media Workshop. 

* 5/20/21 – 5:00-6:30 pm CT – “Sex Work, Trafficking, and Ethics: Exploitation Creep(s) in Music Studies”- Beth Hartman, Lecturer, American Studies, University of Minnesota. Respondent: Eva Pensis. Co-presented with the EthNoise! Workshop. 

Late May/Early June – “Trans Femme Noise: Roundtable Discussion with Cat Monae, Him Hun, and Zola Makeda”- Moderated by Eva Pensis, PhD Candidate, Music and Theater & Performance Studies, University of Chicago.

Winter 2021

1/13/21 –12:oo-1:30pm CT “Dialectics of Revision in Performance Historiography and Dramatic Adaptation”– İlyas Deniz Çınar and Şeyda Nur Yıldırım, Graduate Students in Communication Studies, Kadir Has University Istanbul. Respondent: Asya Sagnak, MA Student in TAPS, University of Chicago.

1/27/21 –12:oo-1:30pm CT“Beneath this Flag Stands a Body: On the Human Form as Final Technology”- Anna Jayne Kimmel, PhD Student in Performance Studies, Stanford University. Respondent: Clara Nizard, PhD Student in English/TAPS, University of Chicago.

* 2/17/21 –5:00-6:30pm CT“A Cultural History of Process-oriented Drama and Pedagogy in post-Civil War Evanston”- Fiona Maxwell, PhD Candidate in History, University of Chicago.  Co-sponsored with the 18/19th C Workshop. 

* 2/23/21 – 10:00-11:00am CT – Scott Sheppard on Dramaturgy and Devised Process in Underground Railroad Game – Scott Sheppard, Lighting Rod Special

3/10/21 – 12:00 – 1:30 pm CT – “Making Melodrama Great Again” – Christopher Corbo, PhD Candidate in English, Rutgers University. Respondent: John Muse, Associate Professor, English and Theater and Performance Studies, University of Chicago.

Fall 2020

10/7/20TAPS Workshop Kickoff Meeting: Current (and particularly new) UChicago faculty and graduate students are invited to introduce themselves to the TAPS community. Register here

*10/30/20 12p – 1:30p CT  “The Theater of Electoral Politics: Seven Keywords” (a roundtable). This roundtable event will feature seven scholars speaking on seven key words common in contemporary political discourse. Keywords and speakers include:

    • Circus    –    Danielle Bainbridge (Assistant Professor of Theatre, Northwestern University)
    • Illusion    –    Sebastián Calderón Bentin (Assistant Professor of Drama, NYU)
    • Performative    –    Michelle Liu Carriger (Assistant Professor, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television)
    • Hygiene Theater    –    Meredith Conti (Assistant Professor of Theatre, University at Buffalo)
    • Canned    –    Christopher Grobe (Associate Professor, Chair of English, Amherst College)
    • Central Casting    –    Brian Herrera (Associate Professor of Theater, Princeton University)
    • Performance Art    –    Laura Levin (Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies, York University)

10/21/20 – “How to make site-specific art when sites themselves have histories: Whittier Boulevard as Asco’s ‘El Camino Surreal’” – Brandon Sward, PhD Candidate, Sociology, University of Chicago. Respondent: Colin Gunkel, Associate Professor, Department of American culture, Department of Film, Television, and Media, University of Michigan.

*11/16/20, 3:00-4:20p CT –  “Colored-in feeling: the Protest Puppets of the Women’s Pentagon Action” – Marissa Fenley, PhD Candidate, English and Theater and Performance Studies, University of Chicago.  Respondents: Bill Hutchinson, PhD Candidate, English, University of Chicago & Michael Stablein, PhD Student, English and Theater and Performance Studies, University of Chicago.  Co-sponsored with 20/21st C Workshop. 

*12/2/20, 4-5:30 p CT“See No More: Theatrical Subjectivity in Oscar Wilde’s Salomé”  – Michelle Chow, MAPH Student, University of Chicago. Respondent: Benjamin Morgan,  Associate Professor, English, University of Chicago.

Spring 2019

POSTPONED: April 2nd: Olga Panteleeva, Lecturer in Musicology at Utrecht University, “The Politics of Cultural Superiority in Putin’s Russia”

This lecture event, cosponsored with Sound & Society workshop and funded by CEERES and The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures will be rescheduled for Fall 2019

April 9th: Ilana Mcquinn, PhD Candidate, History, University of Chicago, “Broadway Behind the Iron Curtain: Tevye the Freedom Fighter on the Czechoslovak Stage”

April 23rd: Honey Crawford, Harper-Schmidt Fellow Collegiate Assistant Professor in TAPS, “The Course of Feitiço in the Turning Wind”

May 3rd: Puppets vs. Robots and Other Stories: An Experiment in Critical Silliness

May 21st: Desiree Foerster, Visiting Research Scholar, University of Chicago, “Atmospheres of Dwelling”

Winter 2019

Jan 15th: Miguel Caballero Vazquez, Collegiate Assistant Professor, University of Chicago, “Theater and/as Preservation: Rafael Alberti’s Noche de guerra en el Museo del Prado (1956)”

Feb 5th: Eleanor Russell, PhD Student, Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama, Northwestern University, “The Body Artist Speaks: The Avant-Garde Postmodernism of Belle Barth and Laurie Anderson”

Feb 12th: Arianna Gass,   PhD Student, English and TAPS, University of Chicago, “Sex with Computers: Virtual Sex, the Virtuality of Bodies, and Nonhuman Consent”

Feb 25th: Tina Post, Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow in English, University of Chicago, “I Will Will Against Your Way: The Poetic Discomposure of Ligia Lewis”

Mar 8th: Meghanne Barker, Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences and Co-Chair of the Society of Fellows, University of Chicago“Stepping out of the Frame”

Mar 12th: Sarah McDaniel, PhD Student, English, University of Chicago, “This is(n’t) it: Living Lateness and the Encounter of Loss “

Fall 2018 

Oct. 5th-6th: Experimental Dramaturgies Forum 

Oct. 16th: Eva Pensis, “Running Up that Hill: Loss, Love, and the Superheroic in the soundtrack to Pose”

Oct 30th: Sharvari Sastry, “Redirected Desires: The Quest for Respectability in Vasant Sabnis’ Viccha Mazi Puri Kara”

Nov 13th: Leslie Buxbaum Danzig, “Issues of Translation and Adaptation in conversation with: Ilkhom Theatre, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and Bata Theatre, Almaty, Kazakhstan

Nov 27th:  Danielle Roper, “Hemispheric Blackface: an introduction”

Spring 2018

April 2: Matthias Dreyer, “Dada Masks: Sophie Taeuber’s Dance and the Test of Emergence”

April 16: Freddie Rokem, “Suddenly a Stranger Appears”

April 30: Arianna Gass, “Proverbs and Misogynistic Jokes in the Early Modern Period”

May 14: Christopher Grobe, “The Artist Is President: “Performance Art” and Other Keywords in the Age of Donald Trump”

Winter 2018

Jan 22: Marissa Fenley (PhD Student, English/TAPS) and Sharvari Sastry (PhD Student, SALC/TAPS), “Byron: a Play”

Feb 5: Ellen Mackay (Associate Professor, English/TAPS), Title TBA.
Feb 19: Aleksi Barrière (PhD Student, Université Paris-Nanterre), “Form Ecology, a tool for interdisciplinary research and creation”
Mar 5: Kevin Kay (MAPH student) “The Embodiment of Musical Personae in Performers: An Affordance of the Visual”

 

Fall 2017:

Oct 16: Danielle Roper (Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow; RLL Department), “Blackface at the Andean Fiesta: Performing blackness in the “Danza de Caporales.”
Please note that this session will be held in Logan 603.

Oct 30: Marissa Fenley (PhD Student, English/TAPS), “Be A Puppet: Tales of Hoffmann as a Model for Comedic Resistance Under the Trump Regime”
This session will be co-hosted by the Mass Culture Workshop
 
Nov 13: Amy Stebbins (PhD candidate, CMS/Germanic Studies), “Actor/Akteur: Autonomy and Authorship in Castorf’s Theater”
Nov 27: Tracy C. Davis (Professor of English and Theater, Northwestern University), “Lives Spent in Advocacy and Judgement: Forms of Performance”

All meetings will be held at Logan 801 (unless specified otherwise) at 4:30 pm.

Spring 2017

Apr 3: Alex Murphy (PhD candidate, EALC Department)

Apr 17: Michael Allemana (PhD candidate, Music Department)

May 1: Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson (Department of Performance Studies, Northwestern University)

May 15: John Muse (English Department)

Winter 2017

Jan 9: Amy Stebbins (PhD candidate, CMS and Germanic Studies Departments). “Historical Actors: Recursive Acting as Historical Critique in Pension Schöller/Die Schlacht (Castorf, 1994).

Jan 23: Sharvari Sastry (PhD student, SALC Department). “Between Ephemerality and Endurance: Performing Indian Theatre History”

Feb 6: Danielle Roper (Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow; RLL Department). “Performing Black Womanhood in Colombia: Hemispheric Blackface in the Age of Multiculturalism.”

Feb 20: Yiren Zheng (PhD student, EALC Department). “Sounding the Ineffable: On Third-century Chinese Whistling as an Alternative Voice.”

FRIDAY, Mar 3: Panpan Yang (PhD student, EALC and CMS Departments); co-hosted with Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia Workshop. “The Romance of Lychee and Mirror: Teochew Opera Film and the Question of Remediation.” Judith Zeitlin (William R Kenan, Jr. Professor, EALC) will serve as discussant.

Autumn 2016

Oct 3: Ameera Nimjee, with Bertie Kibreah (PhD candidates, Music Department): Playing Dance and Dancing Music: The Work of Intimacy in Kathak. A live performance will also accompany this event.

Oct 17: Leslie Buxbaum-Danzig, (TAPS Department): A Circus Theater Adaptation (in process) of Tolstoy’s The Three Questions.

Nov 10 (*Thursday*): Barbara Fuchs (Spanish and Portuguese Department, UCLA): Diversifying the Classics: Bringing Hispanic Classical Theater to LA Audiences.

Nov 14: Axel Englund (Stockholm University): Theatres of Transgression: Bondage, Fetishism and S&M in Contemporary Opera Staging. Co-sponsored with the Music History and Theory Study Group

Nov 28: Marissa Fenley (PhD student, English Department): Silk, Cypress Wood and the Secret of Trout Line: Assembling the Puppets of the Chicago Little Theater. A separate, special performance salon related to this talk will take place on Sunday, Nov 13; look for details on the listserv.