My research area is medieval theatre. I have published and presented on affective piety, puppetry, theater architecture, phenomenology of space, and performance and devotional practices on the Iberian Peninsula. I currently serve on the editorial board of Early Drama, Art and Music (Medieval Institute Publications) and I am an active member of the American Society for Theatre Research and the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society. I was a Fellow on a Title V General Education grant and two National Endowment for the Humanities grants aimed at integrating humanities and STEM disciplines.
Research and Teaching PortfoliosRitual, Spectacle, and Theatre in Late Medieval Seville: Performing Empire. Yorkshire: ARC Humanities Press/Amsterdam University Press, 2023. A full-length study of performance and intercultural exchange and conflict in late medieval Andalusia. 2024 winner of the David Bevington Award for Best New Book in Early Drama Studies.
"Podcast: Robot Saints: What can medieval automata teach us about the age of AI?" Atlas Obscura Podcast (Oct. 17, 2023). https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-robot-saints
Review of Play Time: Gender, Anti-Semitism, and Temporality in Medieval Biblical Drama, by Daisy Black. Theatre Journal, Vol. 76, No. 1 (2024)): 132-133.
“The City Performs: An Architectural History of NYC Theater.” ArcGIS Story Map. https://arcg.is/1KHqCP (May 6, 2021).
"Sites of Performance and Circulation." A Cultural History of Tragedy in the Middle Ages, ed. Rebecca Bushnell, pp. 27-48. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.
(with Ting Chin) “Mapping Urban Performance Culture: A Common Ground for Architecture and Theater.” Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Virtual Place-Based Learning, eds. Lansiquot and MacDonald, pp. 83-98. New York: Palgrave, 2019.
Review of Playing God: The Bible on the Broadway Stage by Henry Bial. TDR: The Drama Review, Vol. 61, No. 2 (2017): pp. 182-84.
"Medieval Studies: Iberian Theater and Performance." Oxford Bibliographies, ed. Paul E. Szarmach. Oxford University Press (2012; revised and updated 2015 and 2017). https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396584/obo-9780195396584-0008.xml
“Robot Saints.” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2015): pp. 52-77.
"Technology and Wonder in Thirteenth-Century Iberia and Beyond." In Performing Objects and Theatrical Things, eds. Marlis Schweitzer and Joanne Zerdy, pp. 21-35. New York: Palgrave, 2014.
"A Penitent Prepares: Affect, Contrition, and Tears." In Crying in the Middle Ages: Tears of History, ed. Elina Gertsman, pp. 79-101. London: Routledge, 2011.
At City Tech I mentor student projects that explore interdisciplinary relationships among texts, historical technologies, and innovative uses of media in performance. I directed a production of Molière’s Scapino on the Voorhees stage and an artist residency with En Tech students at the Joseph Papp Public Theater. I have mentored three Emerging Scholars projects, including the construction of an 18th-century Eidophusikon stage using 21st-century technology and a research project on the history of NYC theater architecture and subsequent publication of an interactive GIS map. At the Humanities Department I coordinate the Theatre Studies Minor.
Disciplines: Theatre History and Performance Studies