PROJECT INDEX

TYPETITLEDATE
CURATED Antagonisms: A Gathering2024.06.01

CURATED Fugitive Intimacies2023.08.12

CURATED  Sound and Color2023.01.13

WRITTEN Unburdening Liveness2022.12.09
CURATED Art at Waters Edge2022.09.09
CURATED Captcha: Dancing, Data, Liberation2022.02.09
CURATED Dark as a Door to a Dream2019.03.30

BIO
Tavia Nyong'o is a critic and scholar of art and performance. He is William Lampson professor of African American studies, American studies and theater and performance studies at Yale University where he teaches courses on black diaspora performance, cultural studies, and critical and aesthetic theory.

CV

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT
YEAR

William Lampson Professor of American Studies, African American Studies and Theater & Performance Studies, Yale University2020–
Chair of Theater & Performance Studies, Yale University.2019–2023
Professor of American Studies, African American Studies and Theater & Performance Studies, Yale University.2016–
Visiting Scholar in American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California.2017–18
Acting Chair of Performance Studies, New York University2015
Associate Professor of Performance Studies, New York University.2009–2016
Assistant Professor of Performance Studies, New York University.2003–2009

EDUCATION

Ph.D. in American Studies, Yale University2003
B.A. College of Social Studies, Wesleyan University, Highest Honors.1995

PUBLICATIONS


WORK IN PROGRESS

The Last Human Generation: Essays
The Racial Reckoning in Art and Performance

MONOGRAPHS

Black Apocalypse: The Glitch at the End of the World. University of California Press, American Studies Now Series (in press).

Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life. New York University Press, 2018.
2019 Winner, Barnard Hewitt Award, American Society for Theatre Research, best book in theatre history or cognate disciplines.

The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance and the Ruses of Memory. University of Minnesota Press, 2009. 2010 Winner, Errol Hill Award, American Society for Theatre Research,best book in African American theater, drama, and performance studies.

EDITED MONOGRAPH

José Esteban Muñoz, The Sense of Brown. Duke University Press 2020. Co-edited with Joshua Chambers-Letson.

EDITED JOURNAL ISSUES

“Presence,” a special issue of TDR: The Drama Review 66.4 2022. Co-edited with Elise Morrison and Kimberly Jannarone.

“Algorithms and Performance,” a special issue of TDR: The Drama Review 63.4 (Winter 2019). Co-edited with Elise Morrison and Joseph Roach.

“Wildness,” a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly 117.3 (July 2018). Co-edited with Jack Halberstam.

“Being With: A special issue on the work of José Esteban Muñoz” Social Text 32.4 (2014). Co-edited with the Being With research cluster.

“Precarious Situations: Race, Gender, Globality.” Special Issue of Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 23.2 (2013).

“Queer/Trans.” Special Issue of Journal of Popular Music Studies 25.4 (2013). Co-edited with Francesca Royster.

“Punk and It’s Afterlives,” a special Issue of Social Text 117 (2013). Co-edited with Jayna Brown and Patrick Deer.

“Recall and Response: Black Women Performers and the Mapping of Memory,” a special issue of Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 16.1 (2006). Co-edited with Jayna Brown.

REFERRED JOURNAL ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS 

“Sound and Color: A Curator’s Introduction” co-written with Jane Cox, Theater 53 (3): 66–73

Unburdening Liveness,” TDR (2022) Vol 66 No 4: pp. 28-36

“So Far Down You Can’t See the Light: Afro-Fabulation in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon” in Soyica Diggs Colbert, Douglas A. Jones, Jr., and Shane Vogel, eds., Race and Performance after Repetition (Durham, Duke University Press, 2020), 29-45.

36.5 A Durational Performance with the Sea 
Sarah Cameron Sunde
Photo by Jeremy Dennis

Art at 
Water’s Edge


PARK AVENUE ARMORY
January 14–15, 2023
CURATED BY
Tavia Nyong’o

FEATURING
Peter Sellars
Wu Tsang
Eng-Beng Lim
S.J Norman
Joseph M. Pierce
devynn emory
Coco Fusco
Adrienne Edwards
Pamela Sneed
Kiyan Williams
Journey Streams
Jerome W Haferd
Macarena Gómez-Barris
Sarah Cameron Sunde
Signe Nielsen
Mitchell Joachim
El Glasberg
Tourmaline
Egyptt Labeija
Michael Wang
Eng-Beng Lim
Jim Bowermaster
Geo Wyex
May Joseph

Artists, activists, and designers engage the meeting of land with water. Facing climate change and rising sea levels, this event links New York with communities across the nation and globe that sit at water’s edge. This afternoon activation is inspired by acclaimed director Peter Sellars’ call to “listen to the oceans,” and by director and scholar May Joseph‘s call for cosmopolitan citizenship in “fluid New York.” From the work of Indigenous water protectors who challenge extractive futures to urban planners responding to waterfront access, Art at Water’s Edge offers an intergenerational forum for the imagination in action.