Spencer Golub
Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies
Theatre, Speech & Dance, Comparative Literature, and Slavic Languages
Phone: +1 401 863 1816
E-mail: Spencer_Golub@Brown.EDU
Biography
Spencer Golub is the author of the books Evreinov: The Theatre of Paradox and Transformation (1984), the Callaway award-winning The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia (1994) and Infinity (Stage) (1999). He has also contributed 150 entries to The Cambridge Guide to World Theatre and The Cambridge Guide to American Theatre, and has published essays in a wide variety of books and professional journals. He is currently at work on two novels.
Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies; of Comparative Literature; and of Slavic Languages and former Chair of the Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance (2001-2007), is the author of the books Evreinov: The Theatre of Paradox and Transformation (1984), the Callaway award winning The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia (1994) and Infinity (Stage) (1999). He has also contributed 150 entries to The Cambridge Guide to World Theatre and The Cambridge Guide to American Theatre and published essays in a wide variety of books and professional journals. The volumes to which he has contributed include: "A History of Russian Theatre, of Borders and Thresholds: Theatre, Practice and Theory"; "Wandering Stars: Russian Emigre; Theatre"; "Foreign Shakespeare: Essays on Contemporary Performance Outside of English"; "The O'Neill Century";" Russian Theatre in the Age of Modernism"; "Gender in Performance"; The Performance of Power: Theatrical Discourse and Politics"; "Novel Images: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Fiction on Stage and Screen"; "Shakespeare Around the Globe"; and "The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet Literature". He also has been a regular reviewer for Choice and an editorial board member of Teatr: Russian Theatre Past and Present, Theatre Survey, New England Theatre Journal and Theatre Insight. He served as a member and as chair of the American Society for Theatre Research's Barnard Hewitt Book Award Committee. Spencer has been a Fulbright, IREX and two-time NEH Fellow. He has worked as a professional stage director, journalist, script consultant and associate artistic director in New York City and served as a guest scholar at professional regional theatres. His research interests include Russian Theatre (in which he teaches two courses, "Revolution as a Work of Art" and "Russian Theatre and Drama"), the performance of mind through the evidence of film and allied to personal narrative and dramatic fictions (in which he teaches the course, "Mise en Scène"), adapting surrealist-based methodologies for scholarly and creative writing (in which he teaches the course, "Abstraction and Resistance"), and reconceptualizing the idea of "the Baroque" (in his course, "New Theories for a Baroque Stage.") He continues also to stage productions, including most recently The Misanthrope, The Changeling and this coming year, Lulu. He is currently working on two novels and serving as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department.
Research
My current research, which is often a hybrid of different fields, overlaps the disciplines of theatre studies and performance studies, incorporating investigations into cultural performance and event (especially, but not exclusively, in Russian/Soviet contexts) and mental performance and event (cinematic mise en scene as projected mental structures and states); philosophical geographies; anxious behaviors; paranoid storytelling and enactments; the incapacity of the real, the normative, and the representational; fakes and agencies of and for spying and lying; authoritative fictions; and death).
Curriculum Vitae
Download Spencer Golub's Curriculum Vitae in PDF Format
