Interview with Joseph Roach : what is performance studies?.

Interview with Joseph Roach, conducted by Diana Taylor, founding director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. This interview is a part of a series curated by the Hemispheric Institute, articulated around the question 'What is Performance Studies?' The series aims to provide a multifaceted approach to the often difficult task of defining the coordinates of both a field of academic study as well as a lens through which to assess and document cultural practice and embodied behavior. The contingent definitions documented in this series are based on the groundbreaking experiences and the scholarly endeavors of renowned figures in contemporary performance studies and practice. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

Joseph Roach is Sterling Professor of Theatre and Professor of English and African American Studies at Yale University. Dr. Roach has chaired the Department of Performing Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre at Northwestern University, and the Department of Performance Studies at NYU. He has served as Director of Graduate Studies in English and Chair of the Theater Studies Advisory Committee at Yale. His most recent book is It (2007), a study of charismatic celebrity. His other books and articles include Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (1996), The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (1993), and essays in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, The Drama Review, Theatre History Studies, Discourse, Theater, Text and Performance Quarterly, and others. Roach holds a B.A. from the University of Kansas, an M.A. from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and a Ph. D. from Cornell University. Roach's many honors include a Senior Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a Lifetime Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society for Theatre Research. In 2006, he won a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create Yale's research program in 'World Performance.' A foremost theater historian and pioneer in the development of performance studies methods and research, his research negotiates the Circum-Atlantic, the threshold between life and death, the relationships between religion, ritual, performance, and daily life, and the way in which history 'isn't over yet.' Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics