Tavia Amolo Ochieng’ Nyong’o
Assistant Professor of Performance Studies
New York University
721 Broadway, Room 606,
New York, NY 10003
Tel: (212) 998-1979 Fax: (212) 995-4571
ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT
2009 — present
Associate Professor, Performance Studies, New York University
2003 — 2009
Assistant Professor, Performance Studies, New York University
EDUCATION
2003 Ph.D., American Studies, Yale University
1995 B.A. with Highest Honors, College of Social Studies, Wesleyan University;
elected Phi Beta Kappa
BOOKS
2009 The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance and the Ruses of Memory. University of Minnesota Press.
ARTICLES
2008
“Musical Miscegenation?: Rock Music and the History of Sex” e-Misferica 5:2.
“I Feel Love: Disco and its Discontents” Criticism 50:1.
“Period Rush: Affective Transfers in Recent Queer Art and Performance” Theatre History Studies 28, 42-48.
“Do You Want Queer Theory or Do You Want the Truth? The Intersections of Punk and Queer” Radical History Review (Winter): 103-119.
2007
“‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’: Queer Assemblages, Lyrical Nostalgia, and the African Diaspora” Performance Research 12(3): 42-54
2005
“Punk’d Theory” Social Text 84/85: 19-34.
“Passing as Politics: Framing Black Political Performance” Women and Performance 29: 53-78.
“The Black First: Crispus Attucks and William Cooper Nell” Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, 2003: 141-152.
2002
“Racial Kitsch and Black Performance” Yale Journal of Criticism 12(2): 371-191. Reprinted in Paula Masood, ed., The Spike Lee Reader (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 212-227.
BOOK CHAPTERS
2008
“When Black Meets Queer” in David Powell, Ed., 21st Century Gay Culture (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing): 97-103.
“Hiawatha’s Black Atlantic Itineraries” in Meredith McGill, ed., The Traffic in Poems: Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Transatlantic Exchange (Newark, NJ: Rutgers University Press): 81-96.
CATALOGUE ESSAYS
Forthcoming
Essay for “Advancing the Dialogue: Symposium on Native Performance Art,” Denver Art Museum.
2008
Exhibition catalogue essay for “Kehinde Wiley: The World Stage: Africa, Lagos – Dakar,” Studio Museum of Harlem.
REVIEWS AND FORA
2007
Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom by Daphne Brooks. Reviewed for Women and Performance 17(2): 257-260.
Hybridity, or, The Cultural Logic of Globalization by Marwan Kraidy. Reviewed for American Quarterly 59(2): 459-466.
Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where “Black” Meets “Queer” by Kathryn Bond Stockton. Reviewed for GLQ 13(2-3): 403-405.
Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture by Janell Hobson. Reviewed for International Journal of Communication.
2006
Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race, by Maureen Mahon; Rip it Up: The Black Experience in Rock ‘n’ Roll, edited by Kandia Crazy Horse; and Afropunk: The ‘Rock n Roll Nigger’ Experience, directed by James Spooner. Reviewed for TDR: The Drama Review 50(1): 183-187.
2005 “Black Theater’s Closet Drama,” Theatre Journal 57(4): 590-592.
“Queer TV: A Comment,” GLQ 11.1: 103-105.
SPECIAL ISSUES
2006
Co-editor with Jayna Brown, “Recall and Response: Black Women Performers and the Mapping of Memory,” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 16(1).
KENYA JOURNALISM
2008 “Perverse Neoliberalism” Social Text Online April 22
“Kenya’s Crisis” The Nation, January 28
“Did Somebody Say ‘Tribal Clashes’?” N+1 Online, January 8
“Kenya’s Rigged Election,” The Nation Online, January 3
ENTRIES IN REFERENCE BOOKS
1999 “African-American History and Politics,” in Timothy Murphy, ed., Reader’s Guide to Lesbian and Gay Studies (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999), 13-15.
SELECTED AWARDS, GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS
2005-06
Faculty Fellow, International Center for Advanced Study, New York University
2005
Grant Recipient, Curricular Development Challenge Fund, New York University
Grant Recipient, University Research Challenge Fund, New York University
2004
Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Prize, American Studies Association (honorable mention)
2004
Faculty Development Grant, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
2002
Mellon Seminar in Gender Studies, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
2001-02
Ford Foundation Minority Dissertation Fellowship
2001-02
Graduate Fellow, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University
2000
Research Fellow, Center for Humanities, Wesleyan University
1998- 2001
Jacob K. Javits Fellowship,
1995-1996
Marshall Scholarship, University of Birmingham
SELECTED PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATIONS
INVITED TALKS
2008
“Musical Miscegenation?” Experience Music Project, Pop Conference, 11 April.
“American Memory and the Postcolony,” Fontaine Society Lecture, Annenberg School of Communications, University of Pennsylvania, 16 April.
Keynote, University of Southern California English Graduate Students Conference, 28 March.
2007
“A Problem Like Obama: Race, Heritage, and Hybridity in America’s National Thing,” Faculty-Graduate Seminar of the Center for African American Studies, Princeton University, 7 November.
“Rip it Up: Excess and Ecstasy in Little Richard’s Sound,” Center for Global Culture and Communication at Northwestern University, Summer Institute, 27 June.
“Bodies in Dissent,” Black Performance Theory 2007, Northwestern University, 19 May
2006
“The Intersections of Punk and Queer,” Queer Theory Seminar at Stockholm University, 30 November.
“Minstrel Trouble.” Women, Gender, and Sexuality Program, Harvard University, 26 October.
“When Black Meets Queer,” Hofstra University Inaugural Queer Symposium, 11 October.
Invited Presenter, Black Performance Theory 2006: Crossroads in Global Performance Williams College, MA, 28-29 April.
Roundtable participant, “Creating the Archive: When Experience Becomes History,” Grey Art Gallery, NYU, 7 March.
Discussant, Electric Purgatory: The Fate of the Black Rocker (2005 Dir. Raymond Gayle), Charlotte, NC, 22 February.
2005
Roundtable participant, “What’s Queer about Queer Studies Now?” Department of Women’s & Gender Studies, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 10 November.
Paper: “Jim Crow’s Music.” International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University, 28 October.
Paper: “Rip it up: Punk, Black Music, and Queer Theory.” Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Cornell University, 12 October.
Keynote Roundtable, Becoming Uncomfortable Performance Studies International 11, 31 March.
Keynote Address, “Performing the Exception,” Visualizing Rituals: Critical Analysis of Art and Ritual Practice Graduate Conference, Cornell University, 5 March.
2004
Invited presenter, Black Performance Theory 2004: Contingent Geographies of Blackness, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 9-11 April.
2003
“Black Performance and the Abolitionist Interior,” Department of Theater, University of California, Los Angeles, 30 January.
“James McCune Smith’s Social Fictions,” Department of English, Indiana University, 6 February.
2002
“Recasting Sexuality in the History of Black Performance,” Department of History, University of Minnesota, 2 December.
“What was Amalgamation? The Case of William G. Allen and Mary King,” Whitney Humanities Center Yale University, January.
2001
“Intercourse across the Color Line in Antebellum America,” Center for Humanities, Wesleyan University, February.
“The Rhetoric of Race-mixing,” College of Social Studies, Wesleyan University, January.
SELECTED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
2009
Panelist, “Queer Historiography,” American Historical Association, January.
2008
“Lipstick Traces: Punk Historiography and Sexual Dissidence” American Studies Association, October.
“The Politics of Being Queer, Revisited” Performance Studies International, August.
2007
“Promiscuous Assemblies of the Black Atlantic.” Plenary lecture, American Society for Theatre Research, 16 November.
“Little Richard’s New Orleans” Association for Theatre in Higher Education Annual Conference, 28 July.
2006
“Tunes from Anticolonial Blackness” American Studies Association Annual Meeting, 14th November.
2005
“Why was Jim Crow called Jim Crow?” American Studies Assocation Annual Meeting, 4 November.
“Astral Glamour: Queer Theory Masquerading as Punk Rock,” 2005 Pop Conference Experience Music Project, Seattle, 15 April.
2004
“The Face of Sylvester” Sylvester: The Life and Work of a Musical Icon New York University, 9 October.
“Burn This Disco Out (In the Disco Heat)” Regarding Michael Jackson: Performing Racial, Gender, and Sexual Difference Center Stage Yale University, 24 September.
“The Abolitionist Interior” Annual Meeting of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Toronto, CA, 30 July.
“Until We Have Faces: Museums, Memory, and the Facial Surrogate” Memory, Haunting, Discourse/Discourse, Haunting, Memory Karlstad University, Sweden, 17-20 July.
“Concrete Men: Support for Amalgamation among Black Abolitionists?” Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, 27 March.
2003
“The Black First: Crispus Attucks and William Cooper Nell” American Society for Theatre Research Annual Meeting, Durham, NC, 21 November 2003. And at the American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Hartford, CT, 17 October.
2000
“‘I, thank God, am with the Oppressed’: Mary and Frank Webb in the Antebellum Diaspora,” Diasporas Africaines dans l’Ancien et le Nouveau Monde: Conscience et Imaginaire, Equipe Diaspora (Etudes Africaines Américaines) de l’Institut d’Anglais Charles V, Université Paris 7—Denis Diderot, October.
1999
“Images of Topsy: Blackness and Femininity as Restored Behaviors,” Americanist Colloquium, Yale University, 24 September.
COURSES TAUGHT
Methods in Performance Studies
The Black Atlantic
Black Performers in the Age of Jim Crow
Performing Race and Nation in the Nineteenth Century
The History of the Body
Subcultural Performance
Theorizing a History of Practices
Queering the Archive
PEER REVIEW
2005- Editorial Collective, Social Text
Article reviewer for Art Journal, Research in African Literature, Women and Performance.
Research grant proposal reviewer for PSC-CUNY Research Award, Grant in Performing Arts Scholarship
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
2008-10 Errol Hill Award Committee, American Society for Theatre Research
2007 Organizer, After CBGB: Gender, Sexuality, and the Future of Subcultures, international one-day conference held at NYU, April 13th
2006 Conference Program Committee, American Society for Theater Research
2005-08 Academic Affairs Committee, Tisch School of the Arts
Chair, Working Group on “Black Performance and Biopolitics,” Performance Studies International
2005 Organizer, “Trading Twelves: New Directions in Black Performance Studies,” Performance Studies International 11, 31 March—2 April
Co-Chair, Seminar on “Blackness and Latinidad in the Americas,” Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 14-18 March
2004 Chair, Seminar on “Global Queer Tastes” at Annual Meeting of American Society for Theatre Research
Chair, roundtable discussion on Zimbabwe Countdown (Michael Raeburn, 2002), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY, 11 December
2001-2003 Graduate Fellow, Calhoun College, Yale University
2001-2002 Organized Queer Studies Reading Group, Yale University
2001 Organized Past Performances, a conference on the intersection of history and performance studies, held at the Center for Humanities, Wesleyan University, 27 April, with a keynote address by Greg Dening
1998-2000 Co-organized Graduate/Faculty Research Colloquium in Gender and Sexuality Studies, Yale
UNIVERSITY AND DEPARTMENTAL SERVICE
2006- Executive Committee, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, New York University
2008-10 University Curricular Challenge Fund Selection Committee, New York University
2006-08 Academic Affairs Committee, Tisch School of the Arts
