Core Faculty
James R. Ball III
Associate Dean for Industry and Community Engagement; Director of the Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts; Associate Professor, Performance and Visual Studies
Ph.D. Performance Studies, New York University
Research: Politics of spectatorship; diplomacy and performance; performance and activism; performance and the law; performance and technology; interactive, immersive and participatory performance
Books: “Theater of State: a Dramaturgy of the United Nations” (Northwestern University Press, 2020), “Performing Statecraft: The Postdiplomatic Theatre of Sovereigns, Citizens, and States” (Methuen Drama, 2022)
Susanneh Bieber
Associate Professor, College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts and College of Architecture
Ph.D. Art History, Freie Universität Berlin
Research: Modern and contemporary American art and architecture; visual art, architecture and ecology
Book: “American Artists Engage the Built Environment,” 1960-1979 (Routledge, 2023)
Matthew Campbell
Instructional Associate Professor, Performance and Visual Studies
Leonardo Cardoso
Associate Professor, Performance and Visual Studies; Section Chair for Visual, Material and Performing Cultures
Ph.D. Sound Studies/Ethnomusicology, The University of Texas at Austin
Research: Science and technology studies, sound studies, actor-network theory, noise, sound art, sonification, politics, law, ethnography, Latin America, urban studies
Book: “Sound-Politics in São Paulo” (Oxford University Press, 2019)
William Klugh Connor III
Senior Lecturer
Ph.D. Ethnomusicology, Royal Holloway University of London
Research: Lovecraftian futurist performance and composition; musical instrument construction as culture; improvisation; experimental sonic performance; social commentary and sound; sonic representation of the imaginary; actor-network theory; monster theory; sound design
David Donkor
Associate Professor, Performance and Visual Studies
Ph.D. Performance Studies, Northwestern University
Research: Theatre/performance as forms of public address in Africana cultures; ethnographies of Ghanaian stand-up comedy, popular theatre and storytelling; culture-economy, dramaturgy and choreography of urban street vending in West Africa
Book: “Spiders of the Market: Ghanaian Trickster Performance in a Web of Neoliberalism” (Indiana University Press)
Daniel Humphrey
Academic Undergraduate Director for Performance and Visual Studies, Professor
Ph.D. Visual and Cultural Studies, The University of Rochester
Research: European art cinema; the horror film; Ingmar Bergman and Swedish cinema; queer subjectivity and cinematic spectatorship; queer subjectivity and film authorship; queer theory; reception studies; transnational film history; U.S. independent cinema
Books: “Queer Bergman: Sexuality, Gender, and the European Art Cinema” (2013) and “Archaic Modernism: Queer Poetics in the Cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini” (2020)
Kim Kattari
Associate Professor, Performance and Visual Studies
Ph.D. Ethnomusicology, The University of Texas at Austin
Research: Subcultural studies; popular music studies; steel pan performance; performance and altered states of consciousness; ethnomusicology; performance studies
Book: “Psychobilly: Subcultural Survival” (Temple 2020)
Francesca Marini
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor, Performance and Visual Studies
Ph.D. Library and Information Science, The University of California, Los Angeles
Research: Theatre studies; film studies; performance studies; arts and performing arts; documentation and archiving; outreach in special collections and archives (especially exhibitions)
Martin Regan
Professor, Performance and Visual Studies
Dawna Schuld
Associate Professor, Modern and Contemporary Art History
Ph.D. Art History, The University of Chicago
Research: Art, technology and the sciences, with an emphasis on how the phenomena of perception are implemented as artistic media
Books: “Minimal Conditions: Light, Space, and Subjectivity” (The University of California Press, 2018), and co-editor (with Cristina Albu), “Perception and Agency in Shared Spaces of Contemporary Art” (Routledge, 2018)
Angenette Spalink
Academic Graduate Program Director for Performance Studies and Associate Professor, Performance and Visual Studies
Ph.D. Theatre, Bowling Green State University
Research: Performance and ecology; eco-performance; interspecies performance; dance studies; physical theatre; devised performance; choreography
Book: “Choreographing Dirt: Movement, Performance, and Ecology in the Anthropocene” (Routledge 2024)
Aurore Spiers
Assistant Professor, Performance and Visual Studies
Ph.D. Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago
Research: Feminist film and media studies; feminist film theory and history; film historiography; gender studies; archive theory; labor history; women filmmakers and movie workers; silent cinema; transnational cinema; French cinema; Hollywood
Book: “Archiving the Past: Women’s Film History in France,” 1927-1978 (University of California Press, forthcoming January 2026)
Patrick Sullivan
Assistant Professor and Associate Undergraduate Program Director for Performance and Visual Studies
Ph.D. Visual and Cultural Studies, The University of Rochester
Research: Aesthetic theory, critical theory, cultural studies, animation, media and labor, sound in media