In a dissertation entitled De-Camping: Towards a Gay-Political-Camp Theatre, John Fisher, a candidate for the Ph.D. in Dramatic Art, examines the political uses of camp theory and how the latter apply to a theatre of protest. For Fisher, who is also a writer and director, “decamping” suggests movement to a new notion of camp and a broader idea of camp’s possibilities as a tool for bringing about social change.
Chinese-language playwright and director Stan Lai is the author of thirty plays and a best-selling book on creativity. He has received Taiwan’s National Arts Award twice (an unprecedented honor) and has been inducted into the Chinese Theater Hall of Fame.
Shannon Jackson is Goldman Professor in Rhetoric and Theater, Dance, and Performance, as well as the Director of the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley. Professor Jackson is currently working on a book on performance and new media in the work of The Builders Association, as well as a large edited collection of keywords in cross-disciplinary art practice with the Pew Center for Art and Heritage.
In his dissertation project, “Don’t Show A Hyena How Well You Can Bite: Performance, Race and the Animal Subaltern in Eastern Africa,” Joshua Williams focuses on the animal in the political and performance history of colonial and postcolonial East Africa.
Shannon Jackson works on socially-engaged art and cross-media aesthetics in a contemporary global context. Her current focus is video art, public art, and experimental performances that address ecological themes.
SanSan Kwan explores the mutually productive interrelationships among moving bodies, place, history, and identity. In particular, she focuses on Asian American dance, via both research and also as a dancer/choreographer. Her current projects include an article on the aesthetics and politics of Asian American passivity, as well as a choreographic response to anti-Asian violence, deploying practices of vulnerability and resilient relationality.
