Mansbridge
JOANNA MANSBRIDGE, Ph.D.
Bilkent University, Main Campus
Department of American Culture and Literature
Ankara, TR, 06800
[email protected]
+90 (312) 290 15 52
CITIZENSHIP
Canadian
EDUCATION
The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY
Doctor of Philosophy in English, 2010
Thesis: “Camp, the Canon, and a Performative Burlesque: The Plays of Paula Vogel as Literary and
Cultural Revision.” David Savran, advisor
 Winner, Adrienne Auslander Munich Dissertation Prize
Field Exams:
 Modern and Contemporary American Drama
 Theatrical Theories, Film Practices: Brecht, Artaud, and Film
 Theories of Culture and Performance
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC
Master of Arts in English, 2005
 Dean’s Medal for Academic Excellence in the Social Sciences and Humanities
University of Regina, Regina, SK
Bachelor of Arts in English (Hon), 2003
 Magna Cum Laude
RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS
Modern and Contemporary Drama, Theatre, and Performance; Film and Visual Culture; Popular Culture;
Gender Studies; American Studies; Critical Theory; Dramaturgy
CURRENT POSITION
Bilkent University
Assistant Professor, Department of American Culture and Literature, September 2014
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American Theater (AMER 343)
Film Studies in American Culture to 1960 (AMER 303)
Film Studies in American Culture since 1960 (AMER 304)
Gender and American Culture (AMER 492)
PREVIOUS ACADEMIC POSITIONS
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC
Instructor, Department of English, September 2013-May 2014
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Introduction to Prose Genres: Creative Nonfiction (ENGL 104W)
Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Richmond, BC
Instructor, Department of English, September 2013-May 2014
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Introduction to Academic Reading and Writing (ENGL 1100)
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC
Instructor, Department of Gender Studies, January 2013-May 2013
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Women and Popular Culture (GSWS 205-3)
St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS
Assistant Professor (contract), Department of English, 2010-2012
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Survey of Literature in English (English 100)
Survey of 20th-Century Literature in English (English 250)
Queens College, City University of New York, Queens, NY
Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of English, 2006-2008
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College Composition (English 110)
Literature and Culture: Performing Gender, Race, and Class (English 120W)
Introduction to Literary Studies (English 150W)
Great Works of Drama (English 155W)
Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, New York, NY
Adjunct Lecturer, Department of English, 2005-2006
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College Composition (English 101)
PUBLICATIONS
Monographs (Peer Reviewed)
Paula Vogel. Modern Dramatists Series. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014. (pp. 232)
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Reviewed in: Modern Drama 59.2 (2016): 256-258.
Theatre Topics 26.2 (2016): 268-269.
Journal Articles (Peer Reviewed)
“Fantasies of Exposure: Belly Dancing, the Veil, and the Drag of History.” The Journal of Popular Culture
49.1 (2016): 29-56.
“Racing Toward History: Utopia and Progress in John Guare’s Free Man of Color.” Modern Drama 58: 4
(2015): 413-36.
“In Search of a Different History: The Remains of Burlesque in Montreal.” Canadian Theatre Review Spec
issue on Burlesque. Guest ed. Shelley Scott and Reid Gilbert. 158 (2014): 7-12.
“Memory’s Dramas, Modernity’s Ghosts: Thornton Wilder, Japanese Theater, and Paula Vogel’s The
Long Christmas Ride Home.” Comparative Drama 46.2 (2012): 209-235.
“Popular Bodies, Canonical Voices: Paula Vogel’s Hot ‘n’ Throbbing as Performative Burlesque.” Voice
and Performance. Spec. issue. of Modern Drama. Ed. Allan Pero. 52.4 (2009): 469-489.
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“Abject Origins: Uncanny Strangers and Figures of Fetishism in Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl.” West Coast
Line 38.2 (2005): 121-133.
Refereed Book Chapters, Edited Collections, and Reviews
“Adapting Queerness, Queering Adaptation: Fun Home on Broadway.” Adaptation, Awards, and the
Value of Prestige. Eds. Colleen Kennedy-Karpat and Eric Sandberg. (under contract with Palgrave
Macmillan)
“John Cassavettes: Interviews (review).” Journal of Popular Film and Television (Forthcoming, spring
2017)
“Introducing the Playwrights: Paula Vogel.” American Decades. Eds. Cheryl Black and Sharon Friedman.
Bloomsbury: New York (Forthcoming, fall 2017)
“Kitchen Sink Realisms: Domestic Labor, Dining, and Drama in American Theatre (review).” Journal of
American Drama and Theatre (Forthcoming, fall 2016)
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“The Comic Bodies and Obscene Voices of 20 -Century Burlesque.” Women and Comedy: History,
Theory, Practice. Eds. Peter Dickinson, Anne Higgins, Diana Solomon, Paul St. Pierre, and Sean
Zwagerman. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014. 97-110.
“Paula Vogel.” Methuen Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights. Eds. Martin Middeke, Peter
Schnierer, Christopher Innes, Matthew C. Roudané. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. 372-90.
“Performing Community: A Review of Popular Political Theatre and Performance and Theatre in Atlantic
Canada.” Canadian Literature 212 (Spring 2012): 132-134.
“Joan Crate.” Twenty-First Century Canadian Writers. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Christian Riegel,
ed. Columbia: Bruccoli, Clark, Layman, 2007. 74-77.
UNDER REVIEW
“Queer Modernities: Zenne Dancers and the Return of History in Contemporary Turkey.” Under review
with Theatre Research International.
WORKS IN PROGRESS
Dragging History: poses of the past in contemporary US drama
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This book-length study takes as its focal point four seminal works of contemporary American
drama – Caroline, or Change, A Free Man of Color, Indecent, and Hamilton – looking at how
these works stage different theories of history, and so also different theories of the future. In
these three works, the present poses “in drag” as the past, sometimes as hopeful utopia, other
times as tragic accident, and always as a choice between alternatives. From these cases studies,
I explore: the capacity for theatre to investigate and obscure the historical construction of social
identities; the potential for drama to both challenge and affirm narratives of modernity and
national identity; the function of the stage as a place on which both artistic and social labour are
made visible; the role of theatre as an embodied cultural archive, civic space, and commercial
battleground.
Feathers and Flesh: popular theatre, performance art, political activism
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This collection traces a genealogy of unscripted performance practices – from burlesque to
performance art to political activism – looking especially at the role of the body – stripped naked
or elaborately adorned – as a prop and tool to uphold and/or deconstruct dominant ideologies of
gender, nation, and globalization. The geographical scope of this study spans the US, UK,
Nigeria, Mexico, and Australia; the temporal scope spans the century and half between the 1880s
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and the present; and the interdisciplinary scope encompasses theatre and performance studies,
feminist and queer theory, social history, and eco-criticism. Mining an archive not of texts, but of
textures (feathers, flesh) and of affects (humour, shock, eroticism), this study looks not only at
bodies as performative sites, but also at the histories of colonialism, consumerism, and
ornamentation that invest those bodies with enduring social and symbolic meanings.
INVITED TALKS
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“Fates Worse than Death: Tragedy in 21 Century American Drama.” Invited plenary paper to be given at
Tragedy and American Drama and Theater: Genre, Mediality, and Ethics conference, University of
Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany, June 1-3 2017.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND PANELS
“Zenne Dancers and Burlesque Queens: The Uses of History in Contemporary Popular Performance.”
Paper presented in Popular Entertainments working group. International Federation of Theatre Research
2016 conference, Stockholm, Sweden, June 13-17, 2016.
“Squabs, Stars, and Swans: Burlesque’s Feathered Fantasies of Female Pleasure.” Plenary presenter
and co-organizer (with Sharon Marcus) of panel, Theater, Performance, and Celebrity: An Archive of
Extravagance, Studio X, Columbia Global Center, Istanbul, TR, September 28, 2015.
“The Affective Labor of Social Change in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change and Sarah Ruhl’s The
Clean House. Panel presentation. Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Women and
Theater Pre-Conference, Montreal, QB, July 29, 2015.
“Fantasies of Exposure: Representations of the Veil in Media and Popular Culture” Paper presented as
part of the working session, “Facing the Other: Reconsidering Transracial Performance.” American
Society for Theatre Research Conference, Baltimore, MD, November 20-23, 2014.
“Cabaret as Counterpublic: Metro AL-Madina and the Animation of Utopian Space.” Plenry paper
presented at the Performance Philosophy workshop “Beirut: Bodies in Public.” American University of
Beirut and King’s College London, Beirut, Lebanon, October 9-11, 2014.
“Belly Dancing and the Enduring Fantasy of Eternal Femininity.” Panel presentation. Canadian
Association of Theatre Research Conference, St. Catherine’s, ON, May 24-27, 2014.
“Family, Fantasy, and Fictions of Authority in And Baby Makes Seven and Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?: Paula Vogel’s Burlesque of Edward Albee.” Panel presentation. Comparative Drama Conference,
April 3-5, 2014, Baltimore, MD.
“A ‘Messy’ History of Burlesque in Montreal.” Paper presented at the Performance Histories seminar,
Canadian Association of Theatre Research Conference, Victoria, BC, June 1-4, 2013.
“The Texture of History in John Guare’s Free Man of Color.” Paper presented as part of working session,
“Staging Time, Timing History,” American Society for Theatre Research Conference, Nashville, TN,
November 1-4, 2012.
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“The Comic Bodies and Obscene Voices of 20 -Century Burlesque.” Invited plenary paper at the Women
and Comedy Workshop. Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, B.C., August 2011.
“The Popular Bodies and Bawdy Voices of Burlesque.” Panel presentation. Canadian Association for
Theatre Research Conference, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, May 31, 2011.
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“Representing Racialized Masculinities in David Henry Hwang’s and David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly.”
Reading Across Cultures, Screens, and Genders. Graduate Conference. Simon Fraser University,
November 2004.
“Abject Origins: Uncanny Strangers and Figures of Fetishism in Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl.”
Equivocations: Form as Critical Space. Graduate Conference. University of Victoria, March 2004.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research, Harvard University
Participant, June 2015
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Readings, seminars, and lectures engaged with the theme “What Gets Performed?: The Life of
the Dramatic Repertoire.” Seminar and workshop leaders Martin Puchner and Andrew Sofer.
University of British Columbia, Continuing Studies
Creative Placemaking, fall 2013
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Prepares professionals from a variety of backgrounds with the theories and tools of an artsfocused urban planning method that mobilizes local artists and cultures to shape the physical and
social character of a community; goals of creative placemaking include: fostering strong
relationships between artists, businesses, and local residents; working toward economic
sustainability; promoting diversity, collaboration, and inclusivity. Led by Artscape VP, Pru Robey.
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, 2013
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Researched a SSHRC-funded dance-theatre project examining the relationship among affect,
history, and politics in works by Bill T. Jones, Crystal Pite, Ralph Lemon, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.
CUNY School of Law, Queens, NY
Writing Fellow, 2008-2009
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Prepared and led workshops aimed to help law students develop their writing and speaking voice
and organize their legal arguments; worked with law professors to find ways of incorporating
writing pedagogy into their courses.
City University of New York, New York, NY
Writing Across the Curriculum Workshops, 2006-2009
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Participated actively in CUNY’s Writing Across the Curriculum program, attending a
series of interdisciplinary workshops aimed at developing pedagogical strategies for
graduate fellows teaching at CUNY colleges.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Performance Matters, academic journal
Board member, 2014
International advisory board member of an online, open-source performance studies journal
published by Open Journal Systems (OJS)
Bilkent University, Renkli Düşün/Think Colorfully
Faculty Advisor, 2014
Advise the activities and agenda of Bilkent University’s LGBT student club.
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Department of American Culture and Literature, Bilkent University
Director, fall 2014
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Directed AMER students in a production of Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive at Bilkent
University’s Chamber Theatre
COMMUNITY SERVICE
Film Series, Bilkent University
Co-organizer and presenter, 2014
Organizing biannual film series co-sponsored by the American Culture and Literature and
Communication and Design Departments and the Program in Cultures, Civilizations, and Ideas
PuSh Festival, Vancouver, BC
Hospitality volunteer, spring 2014
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Liaison between artists/performers and the PuSh Festival staff
Bauer Theatre, Antigonish, NS
Dramaturg, 2011-2012
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Worked with the artistic director, providing background research and production histories on plays
produced during the regular season
FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
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CATR Award for research in Francophone Theatre and Performance, 2013 (Canadian
Association for Theatre Research)
SSHRC Small Institutions Grant, $1,500, 2011 (St. Francis Xavier University)
Adrienne Auslander Munich Dissertation Prize, 2009/2010 (Graduate Center, CUNY)
Writing Fellowship, CUNY School of Law, 2008/2009-$28,000
Chancellor’s Fellowship, 2005-2009 (Graduate Center, CUNY)
Doctoral Fellowship, 2005-2009 (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada/SSHRC): $20,000/year
Canadian Government Scholarship, 2005-2008 (SSHRC): $35,000/year [declined]
Dean’s Graduate Convocation Medal for Academic Excellence in the Social Sciences and
Humanities, 2005 (SFU)
C.D. Nelson Scholarship, 2003-2004 (SFU): $18,000
Graduate Fellowship, 2004 (SFU): $6,000
Fairfax Scholarship, 2002-2003 (AUCC): $10,000
Torville Scholarship, 2002 (U of R): $1,000
Jaimie-Lynne Morrison Memorial Scholarship, 2003 (Campion College): $1,500
Academic Achievement Awards, 2001-2003 (University of Regina): 6 X $1,500
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
International Federation for Theatre Research
Modern Language Association
American Society for Theatre Research
Canadian Association for Theatre Research
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REFEREES
David Savran. Distinguished Professor, Theatre Program, Graduate Center, CUNY, 365 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY, 10016. [email protected]. 212-817-8874.
Peter Dickinson. Professor. English Department, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive,
Burnaby, B.C., V5A 1S6. [email protected]. 604-908-0993.
Steven Kruger. Professor, English Program, Graduate Center, CUNY. 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY,
10016. [email protected]. 212-817-8352.
Paul Marquis. Professor and Chair, English Department, St. Francis Xavier University, Box 5000
Antigonish, NS, B2G 2W5. [email protected]. 902-867-2169.
Edward P. Kohn. Associate Professor and Chair, Department of American Culture and Literature, Bilkent
University, Ankara, Turkey, 06800. +90 (312) 290 19 31.
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