As of 2014, all newly submitted Graduate Center dissertations and theses appear in Academic Works shortly after graduation. Some works are immediately available to read and download, and some become available after an embargo period set by the author.
Dissertations and theses from before 2014 are generally accessible only to the CUNY community, but some authors have chosen to make theirs open access.
The Ph.D. Program in Theatre and Performance was formerly known as Theatre. Dissertations submitted prior to September 2018 reflect this earlier name.
Dissertations from 2024
Epistemic Theatres: The Dramaturgy of Knowledge in Twenty-First Century Theatre, Amir Farjoun
Dissertations from 2023
Spectacle on the Fringe: Masks, Materiality, and Movement in South Asia, Deepsikha Chatterjee
“Here in America”: Broadway Musicals and the Making of Jewish Americans, Barrie Gelles
Political Theatre After Occupy: Participation, Interpellation, and the Search for New Subjectivities in the Theatre, Andrew J. Goldberg
“For ‘Their Own Good’”: Education, The Performing Arts, and Social Justice at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 1915–2023, Anna S. Harb
Transnational Ritual Poetics of Blackness in Performance, Nina A. Mercer
Indigenous Performances in Contemporary Indian Urban Public Theatres: Coloniality, Globalization, and the State, Mayurakshi Sen
Dissertations from 2022
A Girl Is a Thing: Dramaturgies of Objects and Nature in Contemporary Choreography, Fidan Akinci
Staging Retro-Perspectives: Performing Age, Memory/loss, and Queer Desire in the Later Works of Split Britches (2009–2020), Benjamin Gillespie
Banarasipan as Revelation: Immanent Utopias in the Performance of Everyday Life, Bhargav Rani
Gay Boy and Playboy Revues: Constructing U.S. Queer Collectivities in Networks of Peripatetic Burlesque and Nightclub Drag Performers, 1933–1939, Kalle Westerling
Dissertations from 2021
Broadway in the Age of American Idol: Celebrity and the Broadway Musical, 2003–2018, Emily E. Clark
Becoming Material: Devotional Encounters Between Humans and Objects in the European Middle Ages, Debra L. Hilborn-Davis
A Host of People in Detroit: Forging a Twenty-First Century Ensemble in the Deindustrial City, Jacob Hooker
Dramaturgies of Intellectual Property Law in Read-Write Theatre, Andrew Kircher
Baccio del Bianco at the Court of Spain: Early Modern Scenic Design in Context, Pamela Thielman
Countersexuality in Times of Neomachismo: Representations of Gender in Contemporary Spanish Performance (1988–2019), Mara I. Valderrama
Dissertations from 2020
The Argentines of Paris: Theatrical Networks and Assemblages, Stefano Boselli
Devising Complicité: Devised Theatre, Neoliberal Funding Pressures, and the Evolution of Théâtre de Complicité, Joseph Anthony Heissan Jr.
Acting Objects: Staging New Materialism, Posthumanism and the Ecocritical Crisis in Contemporary Performance, Sarah Lucie
Reframing the Family Portrait: The Surrogate Mother in U.S. Theatre and Film 1939–1963, Alison Walls
Dissertations from 2019
Just a Buncha Clowns: Comedic-Anarchy and Racialized Performance in Black Vaudeville, the Chop Suey Circuit, and las Carpas, Michael Shane Breaux
Broadway Bodies: Casting, Stigma, and Difference in Broadway Musicals Since "A Chorus Line" (1975), Ryan Donovan
Madness and the Broadway Musical, 1940s–2000s, Aleksei Grinenko
Embodied Nostalgia: Early Twentieth Century Social Dance and U.S. Musical Theatre, Phoebe Rumsey
Dramaturgies of Democracy: Performance, Cultural Policy, and Citizenship in Chile, 1979–Present, Jennifer J. Thompson
Dissertations from 2018
Under the Influence: Drinking and Immersion in New York City Theatre and Popular Entertainment, 1850 to Present, Chloë R. Edmonson
Being in Performance: A Philosophical Account of the Embodied Actor, Brad M. Krumholz
Wukongism: Monkey King, Kungfu/Jazz, and Asian/American Performance, Sissi Liu
The Theatrical King: Joseph Addison's Invention of Modern Sovereignty, Dan Poston
The Other at War: Performing the Spanish-Cuban-American War on U.S. and Cuban Stages, Juan R. Recondo
The Lines Between the Lines: Stage Directions as Fluid, Affective Collaborations Between Theatre Texts and Theatre Makers, Sarah Bess Rowen
African American Performers in Stalin’s Soviet Union: Between Political Promise and Racial Propaganda, Christopher E. Silsby
“Are They Supposed to Be Heugin?": Negotiating Race, Nation, and Representation in Korean Musical Theatre, Ji Hyon Yuh
Dissertations from 2017
Nervous Salomes: New York Salomania and the Neurological Condition of Modernité, Margaret K. Araneo
Fit for the Stage: Regency Actors and the Inspiration Behind Romantic Drama, James Armstrong
One Endless Dance: Tanaka Min's Experimental Practice, John (Zack) Fuller
Acts of Provocation: Popular Antiracisms on/through the Twenty-First Century New York Commercial Stage, Stefanie A. Jones
Theatre Translation as Historiography: Projections of Greek Self-Identity Through English Translations During the European Crisis, Maria Mytilinaki
Performing Human Rights in Neoliberal Asia: Artistic and Activist Engagements in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore, Melissa Wansin Wong
Dissertations from 2016
Straddling Feminisms: Post-Wave Pop Politics and Experimental Performance, Jessica Del Vecchio
Performing el Rap el ʿArabi 2005-2015: Feeling Politics amid Neoliberal Incursions in Ramallah, Amman, and Beirut, Rayya S. El Zein
Theatres of Reality, Fiction, and Temporality: Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller’s Ibsen-Saga (2006 - 2015), Andrew L. Friedman
Professional Wrestling and/as Theatre: Bodies, Labor, and the Commercial Stage, Eero Laine
Shakespeare for the Volk: Shakespeare and the Development of the Idea of German Nationhood, 1817–1867, Daniel Rockhill Siegel Venning
Occupy Citizenry: Participatory Performance in New York City: 2009-2015, Kenn Dixon Watt
Animal Performance in Big-Time Vaudeville, Catherine M. Young
Dissertations from 2015
Economies of Touring in American Theatre Culture, 1835-1861, Nicole Berkin
Performing (Non)Profit, Race, and American Identity in the Nation's Capital: Arena Stage, 1950-2010, Donatella Galella
The Pulitzer Prize and Women: An Investigation into Three Decades of Winning Plays by Female Dramatists (1981-2009), Kathleen Potts
Dissertations from 2014
Cologne Carnival's "Alternative" Stunksitzung: Carnivalization? Meta-Carnival? Or Bakhtinian Restoration?, Erik Abbott
Ridiculous Geographies: Mapping the Theatre of the Ridiculous as Radical Aesthetic, Kelly Aliano
Dissertations from 2010
Synesthetic Landscapes in Harold Pinter’s Theatre: A Symbolist Legacy, Graça Corrêa
Dissertations from 2003
Art or Propaganda: A Historical and Critical Analysis of African-American Approaches to Dramatic Theory, 1900–1965, Henry D. Miller
Dissertations from 2001
Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals, and the Mass-Marketing of Amusement, 1895-1915, Andrew L. Erdman
Dissertations from 1999
Contemporary Romanian Theatre: Artistry, Honesty, and Adaptation in the Plays of Iosif Naghiu, Dumitru Radu Popescu and Marin Sorescu, Eric Pourchot
John Brougham: The American Performance Career of an Irish Comedian, 1842–1880, Dana Rahm Sutton
The Women of the Ten, Twent', Thirt': Popular Melodrama Theatre in Turn-of-the-Century New York, Barbara Meredith Waldinger
Dissertations from 1992
Acting Hysteria: An Analysis of the Actress and Her Part, Lydia Stryk
Dissertations from 1990
Improvisation for Actor Training and Performance in 20th Century America (with Special Emphasis on the Spolin and Sills Tradition), Jeff David Brone
Influences of the Post-World War II Era on the American Political Theater, 1968–1972, Lydia Alix Gerson
Dissertations from 1989
The Theatre of Adrian Hall, Jeannie Marlin Woods
Dissertations from 1988
Feminist Theory and Postwar American Drama, Gayle Austin
Dissertations from 1987
Dissertations from 1983
The Principles of Acting According to Stella Adler, Joanna Helen Rotte
Dissertations from 1978
Theatre and Drama and the Nazi Concentration Camps, Alvin Goldfarb