Over the past fifteen years, my research and publication on medieval Iberian performance and theater has helped fill a significant lacuna in the field. In many universities, Iberian medieval theatre is still considered an anomaly, especially as compared to the well-documented dramatic traditions of England and France. Prior to my 2023 book Ritual, Spectacle and Theatre in Late Medieval Seville, it had been twenty-five years since an English-language volume on medieval Iberian theatre was published. Nominated for a Future Perfect New Voices Award, the monograph rehabilitates the study of medieval Iberian theatre by placing performance practices, material culture, and architecture at the center of the conversation.
My journal articles, book chapters, invited lectures and conference presentations delineate new critical and historiographic territory in medieval theater by engaging with interconfessional performance culture and the notion of Iberian Convivencia–hybrid culture that emerged from the interaction of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities. My research has revealed new evidence for theatrical activity in medieval Spain, including jongleur performance, puppetry, and religious and civic rituals. The annotated bibliography in my “Iberian Theatre and Performance” piece attests to a burgeoning interest in Iberian performance from a range of academic disciplines and my scholarship has been instrumental in shaping the evolving field.
As a recognized expert in the field of medieval Spanish theater, I am regularly engaged by journal editors to review books, book series editors to serve as an anonymous reader, scholarly societies to organize conference panels, and peers in the field to contribute to essay collections. My contributions to Oxford University Press and Bloomsbury collections and my position on the editorial board of Medieval Institute Publications are exemplary. This past Fall I was invited to give a talk on Islamic shadow puppetry in the medieval Maghreb and Andalusia at Yale University. My work has been recognized in wider communities as well, The New York Times and in popular podcasts, like Atlas Obscura.
My second area of research is contemporary theater architecture, and is deeply embedded in my teaching and curriculum development at City Tech. I have collaborated with colleagues at Architectural Technology and Entertainment Technology in publication and course development, and with my students on numerous Emerging Scholars projects. The comprehensive and valuable online resource that came out of these workshops and collaborations is the ArcGIS Story map The City Performs: An Architectural History of NYC Theater, a multi-semester Emerging Scholars project with significant historical value to scholars of New York City theatre history and the general public.
Going forward, I am directing the Emerging Scholars project investigating a blended reality installation of Javanese shadow puppetry (part of the three-year CUNY Anti-Hate Initiative). I am revising a co-written journal article “The Importance of Humanities in a Career-Focused Educational Environment,” and expanding my Yale paper on Islamic technology and puppetry for inclusion in an edited volume of essays on medieval puppetry. My scholarship will continue to explore intersections of the ancient arts, theater, and technology in order to better understand the unique human contributions to culture.
