As I've mentioned before, this semester I am teaching a session of a graduate seminar course entitled "Final Projects in Performance Studies." The class is a requirement for master's degree students in my department completing their thesis projects.
As apart of my on going "what is performance studies?" blog series, I've decided to highlight my students and their research. Find out more about their fabulous projects by visiting performancestudies.blogspot.com
Here they are folks:
Karina Claudio- Santurce recieved her B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras (2007) as is currently a Master’s Candidate at NYU’s Performance Studies Department (2007-2008). Winner of a Wasserman Grant and Hispanic Arts Foundation award, she is interested in the study of the Latino Diaspora in New York through the lens of Post-Colonial, Movement and Critical Race studies. More broadly she is interested in Puerto Rican and Dominican cultural production (literature, art installation, dance and performance art) in relation to the immigrant experience and the construction of race.
*Karina's thesis final project is entitled
"Sancocho: The displacement of the post-colonial Caribbean body."
Cyrena Drusine is an MA candidate in Performance Studies at New York University. An honors graduate of Mount Holyoke College in 2005 (B.A. in Critical Social Thought), her interests include cultural anthropology, ethnographic research, and critical dance studies. She is more specifically interested in dance in Latin America and the Caribbean. Currently she is conducting research on tango as a dance and as an embodiment of the Argentine culture and the people.
*Cyrena's thesis final is entitled "Una Emoción: A Tango of Memories, Nostalgia and History."
Ebony Noelle Golden is the daughter of Pearl Glover, Bertha Sims and Betty Sims. She is a native of Houston, TX. Ebony holds a BA in English Literature and Poetry from Texas A & M University and a MFA in Poetry from American University. Ebony is an artist and community worker. She has been awarded grants from the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Triangle Community Foundation, North Carolina A & T University and NYU. She has been published by Black Issues and Books Review, American Book Review and Third World Press. Her current project, “Gumbo Ya/Ya or This is Why We Speak in Tongues,” incorporates womanist, performance, and critical race theory to create ethnographic experimental theatre processes that highlight African American women’s practices of healing and spirituality.
*Ebony's thesis final is entitled "Gumba YaYa, or, This is Why We Speak in Tongues."
Ayanna Williams is a current MA candidate in Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She is a singer, actress, and dancer who combines mediums to query and reconcieve tradition performance practice. Her theoretical interests include critical race theory, post-colonial politics, diasporic relationships, and gender politics as they relate to her own performance practice. She is currently working on her first solo work and debut album.
*Ayanna Williams' thesis final is entitled "In the break of the moan, groan, scream, and wail: configuring the aesthetics of black female vocal performance."
Eric Miles Glover is an MA candidate in Performance Studies at New York University. His interests include the history of the American musical theater and post-World War II African-American theater. He examines the performance of gender and sexuality in post-Civil Rights black cultural production. He received a BA in Art History at Swarthmore College.
*Eric's thesis final is entitled
"Performances of Manhood in Post-Civil Rights African-American Theater."
Ellen Cleghorne is an M.A. candidate in Performance Studies at NYU. Her research interests includes humor narratives, the ethnography of Black Americans, critical race theory, marxist theory, and avant-garde theater and performance. Outside of academia, as an EMMY award winning actress, Ellen is well known for her four seasons on NBC's SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE where she played characters such as "Zoraida," "Queen Shaniqua," and "the Afrocentric Critic." She was also the star of Cleghorne!, her own sitcom on the WB Network. She is currently conducting research on Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass at the 1893 World's Fair.
*Ellen's final thesis project is entitled " Reasons Why: Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells at the Chicago World's Fair 1893."
Myrton Wesley Running Wolf is a Masters candidate in Performance Studies at New York University. A tuition scholarship award winner to the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in 1996 and a Master of Fine Arts graduate in film production from the University of Southern California in 2003, his interests include Native American marginalization and romantic representation in mainstream media, critical race theory, religious studies, and the cultural politics of accessibility to feature film, broadcast television, and Broadway theater. More broadly, he is interested in the transition period from 1875 – 1915 when the myth of Native America ceased to be anthropologic in nature and shifted to Third World politics. His final Masters project, titled Carlisle – a different three sisters, is an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters and is set at the infamous paramilitary assimilation academy, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, only months before America involvement in World War I.
Elizabeth Koke has a B.A. in Women and Gender Studies from Smith College and is currently an M.A. candidate in Performance Studies at New York University. Her interests include feminist theory, queer studies, critical race theory and the performance of femininity, whiteness, and class in American popular culture.
Elizabeth's thesis final is entitled, "Sugar in my Bowl: Nina Simone, queer desire and me."
