Shane Vogel is an Assistant Professor of English at
Indiana University,
Bloomington where he teaches performance studies, queer studies, and American studies. From 2006-2007 he also held the Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University. He received his Ph.D. in Performance Studies from NYU in 2004 where his dissertation committee consisted of Jose Munoz, Phillip Brian Harper, Diana Taylor, Ann Pellegrini and Joseph Roach. Vogel's dissertation
"When the little dawn was grey: Cabaret Performance and the Harlem Renaissance " received the NYU Dean's Outstanding Dissertation Award in the Humanities as well as the Michael Kirby Memorial Prize for Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation . He is currently revising his dissertation as a book manuscript entitled
"Against Uplift: The Cabaret School of the Harlem Renaissance." Taking a performance studies approach to literature and modernism, the manuscript argues that early black writers and performers made use of
Harlem's cabaret to imagine alternatives to the narratives of racial uplift and sexual respectability offered by the Renaissance's leading organizers. Some of his most recent articles related to this research include “Lena Horne’s Impersona” (
Camera Obscura, forthcoming 2008), "Stormy Weather: Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, and the Staging of African American Modernism,” (
South Central Review, 2007) and "“Closing Time: Langston Hughes, Afterhours, and the Queer Poetics of Harlem Nightlife” (
Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts, Summer 2007).
Learn more about Shane's research by visiting the website of the English department IndianaUniversity, Bloomington. Below is an excerpt from his dissertation abstract:
"When the little dawn was grey" Cabaret performance and the Harlem Renaissance
By Shane Vogel
Harlem cabaret of the 1920s was, and continues to be, an overdetermined site of meaning, condensing a number of social anxieties of the post-World War I era into the image of black performance and the scene of urban nightlife. With its criminal and sexual associations, the cabaret figured prominently in debates over the proper subject matter for black literature and the terms of representation of black life and culture. This dissertation approaches narratives of the cabaret as a location of struggle over the knowledge of sexually dissident and criminal subjects and the "truth" of blackness. At the same time that the cabaret was employed in the white construction of a sexualized and criminalized knowledge of blackness, it was also a literary trope used by black writers of the Harlem Renaissance to index a structure of racial feeling and public intimacy. Against stereotypical images of exotic primitivism, depictions of the cabaret allowed for a writing of desire and sociality in Harlem Renaissance literature.
Category: "What is Performance Studies?"
By highlighting the research of current students and scholars in the field of performance studies, the "what is performance studies?" is intended as an online resource for newcomers to the discipline.
Previous Posts in this Series:
Spotlight on Berta Jottar, Ph.D.
Spotlight on Farai Bere
Spotlight on Beth Sarah Wright, Ph.D.
Spotlight on Jeffrey Q. McCune , Ph.D.
Spotlight on Shante Smalls
Spotlight on PopMatters Conference
Spotlight on Methods in Performance Studies
Shane Vogel is an Assistant Professor of English at 
