2023 Faculty Publishing Achievements

2023 was a busy year for UB Theatre and Dance faculty in publishing research in academic journals and books, as well as creating performance work across many stages-local, regional and national. Congratulations to our entire talented faculty. We look forward to what the New Year brings. Here’s a look back at some of the scholarship our faculty produced in 2023.

Many faculty contributed to academic journals or published new books. Assistant Professor of Theatre Danielle Rosvally, PhD, penned two journal articles about the works of William Shakespeare with Trevor Boffone, including "Aggressively Millennial: A Dialogue on & Juliet" for Studies in Musical Theatre 17, no. 1 (April 2023): 25-33 and “Everyone in Illyria is Bi you Absolute Cowards”: Shakespeare TikTok, Twelfth Night, and the Search for a Queer Utopia" for Shakespeare Bulletin 40, no. 4 (Winter 2022): 81–507.

From the Abstract: “As TikTok continues to cement itself as the most popular social media platform in the world, the nuanced ways in which Shakespeare nerds use the platform to display their digital fandom remain understudied. This essay addresses how Shakespeare TikTokers (“ShakesTokers”) use the platform to create a queer utopia, and specifically how this utopia manifests in the usage of Twelfth Night as a queer touchstone. In this piece, we consider ShakesTokers’ readings of the text as a fluid space of gender and identity in order to show how the dramaturgy of Twelfth Night aligns with Gen Z politics and aesthetics which inform TikTok’s culture at large.” Rosvally is also a co-author of Yassified Shakespeare: http://www.yassifiedshakespeare.com; https://www.tiktok.com/@yassifiedshax

Associate Professor of Theatre and Department Chair Eero Laine, PhD, co-authored “Collaboration and Co-Finitude: An Agenda of Care and Ends” in Performance Research 27, no. 6–7 (2022): 15–25, along with Rustom Bharucha, Felipe Cervera, Steve Dixon, Eva Horn, Kyoko Iwaki, Zarina Muhammad, Amanda Piña, and Kristof van Baarle.

Laine’s “The Labor of Academic Journals; Or, Who is Going to Read This?” appeared in Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History 15 (2023): 59–63. Laine also co-authored two journal works with UCLA's Michelle Liu Carriger, including “‘Cultivating a Small Field’”: On the Work of Citation in Theatre and Performance Studies Scholarship” in Theatre Topics 33, no. 2 (July 2023): 83–89.
As part of this special issue on the subject of citation, Laine and Carriger examine how academic fields are created and sustained through their "web of citations." The co-authors interviewed current and former editors of academic journals regarding their approaches to and theories of citation. The article considers not only how "citations can build arguments, but they also build relations" in a field of study.

Assistant Professor of Dance Ariel Nereson, PhD, collaborated with Alison Bory on “A Set of Questions for a Field in Motion: Susan Leigh Foster’s ‘Choreographies of Protest’ and Dance Studies in Theatre Journal” in Theatre Journal Vol. 75, No. 4 (December 2023). Nereson published two additional solo articles, contributing “African American Dance Theatre” to The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre, 2^nd ed., ed. Harvey Young. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 317-333, as well as “Postmodern Dance’s Legacies on the Musical Theatre Stage” in Dance in Musical Theatre: A History of the Body in Movement, eds. Dustyn Martincich and Phoebe Rumsey. London: Bloomsbury Methuen, 2023. 235-252.

From the book description: “From Oklahoma! and West Side Story, to Spring Awakening and Hamilton, dance remains one of the most important and key factors in musical theatre. Through the integration of song and dance in the 'dream ballets' of choreographers like Agnes De Mille; the triple threat performances of Jerome Robbins' dancers; the signature style creation by choreographers like Bob Fosse with dancers like Gwen Verdon; and the contemporary, identity-driven work of choreographers like Camille A. Brown, the history of the body in movement is one that begs study and appreciation. Dance in Musical Theatre offers guidelines in how to read this movement by analyzing it in terms of composition and movement vocabulary whilst simultaneously situating it both historically and critically.”  

Watch this space for our forthcoming follow-up story about additional 2023 faculty publications.