Shane Vogel
Associate Professor
Ph.D., Performance Studies, New York University, 2004
M.A., Performance Studies, New York University, 2000
B.A., Classics and English Literature, Tulane University, 1997
Located at the intersection of performance studies, theatre studies, American studies, and queer studies, my research and teaching are broadly concerned with the ways that social relations are imagined and reimagined through American performance practices. In The Scene of Harlem Cabaret, I examine how cabaret performance and the practices of Harlem’s everynight life during the 1920s and 1930s produced frameworks for public intimacy and affective exchange. Recovering the critique-function of Harlem’s nightlife, I demonstrate how a number of performers and writers used the cabaret to contest the sexual and racial normativity of the Harlem Renaissance and, in doing so, to compose new narratives of race and sex. I am currently researching two projects. The first examines the formal and historical significance of the musical revue for African-American aesthetics, theatre history, and cultural politics. The second examines how the global vision of Eugene O’Neill and other modern dramatists underwrites American modernity and its theatre, refiguring post-war America’s relationship to planetary time and space. I regularly teach courses on modern and contemporary drama, dramatic theory, queer performance, and performance studies.
Recent Courses
Graduate:
L775 American Performance and Theories of Value
L775 Intimacy and Alienation in Modern American Drama, 1900-1950
L672 Queer Performance/Theory, 1960 to the Present
L680 Performance and Performativity (Special Topics in Literary Studies and Theory)
C601 Introduction to Cultural Studies: Critiques of Everyday Life
Undergraduate:
L396 African American Literature and Performance in the Jim Crow Era
L371 Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and their Legacies
L363 Performance and American Modernity, 1850-1950
L203 Introduction to Drama
L141 Nightlife
L369 Global O’Neill
Selected Publications (click images for more information)
Books:
The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, Performance (University of Chicago Press, 2009)
Articles:
"Jamaica on Broadway: The Popular Caribbean and Mock Transnational Performance," Theatre Journal vol. 62, no. 1 (2010): 1-22.
"By the Light of What Comes After: Eventologies of the Ordinary," Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 19.2 (2009). Special Issue: Between Psychoanalysis and Affect
“Performing ‘Stormy Weather’: Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, and Katherine Dunham,” South Central Review 25.1 (2008) Special Issue: Staging Modernism
“Lena Horne’s Impersona,” Camera Obscura 23.1 (2008): 10-45.
“Closing Time: Langston Hughes and the Queer Poetics of Harlem Nightlife,” Criticism 48.3 (2006 [published in 2007]): 397-425.
“Where Are We Now?: Queer World Making and Cabaret Performance,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 6.1 (2000), 29-60.
Review Essay:
"The New Queer Essentialism." American Literature vol. 83, no. 1 (2011): 175-184.
Selected Honors and Awards
Honorable Mention, Errol Hill Award (for best book in African American theatre, drama, or performance studies), American Society for Theatre Research. 2010
Trustees' Teaching Award, Indiana University. 2010
Outstanding Essay in Theatre/Performance Studies, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, "Lena Horne's Impersona." 2009
Honorable Mention, Gerald Kahan Scholar's Prize, American Society for Theatre Research, "Lena Horne's Impersona." 2009
Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Emory University. 2006-2007
Dean's Outstanding Dissertation Award, New York University. 2005
Michael Kirby Memorial Prize for Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation, New York University. 2005
American Theatre in Higher Education Graduate Student Theory and Criticism Award. 2003
