I teach, research, and write about 20th and 21st century drama, theater, performance art, and media. In my current book project, Act without Words: Speechless Performance on Modern Stages, I examine why and how the concept of a “language” of gesture has attracted theater artists, writers, and theorists disenchanted with the capacity of spoken and written language to represent human experience.

My first book, Beyond Text: Theater and Performance in Print after 1900 (University of Michigan Press, 2019) details the complex relationship between text and performance in the twentieth-century European and American avant-gardes. I show that while the avant-gardes may have dismissed the dramatic author, they embraced the page, altering the status, form, and function of the text in ways that continue to impact both the performing and the graphic arts.

I have published essays on topics ranging from Bernard Shaw’s 1890s plays to Forced Entertainment’s digital performances.

Undergraduate Courses:
Reading and Writing about Drama
Modern British Drama
Selected British Authors after 1900
American Drama after 1900
Honors Seminar: Samuel Beckett, Modernism, and Media

Graduate Courses:
Modernist Studies
Seminar in Performance Theory: Writing Theater
Introduction to Graduate Study
Nonfiction Writing Program: Performance, Criticism, and the Essay
Theatre Arts: Modern Drama

Research Areas:
Drama, Theatre, and Performance
Modernism
Book Studies

Jennifer Buckley CV