Committee Chairing

Doctoral Committees (Chair)

Kate Pierson, graduate, 2020. (Co-chair, with Mary Karen Dahl) “The Audacious Ann Jellicoe and the Formation of Her Community Play System.”

Allison Gibbes, graduate, 2019. “The Star-Spangled Consciousness: Musical Theatre Anthems of Unity and the Performance of National Identity.”

Anthony Gunn, graduate, 2018. “‘It Has Shown No Intention of Going Away’: The Disembodied Theatre of Edward Gorey.”

Devair Jeffries, graduate, 2018. “Melodramatic Melanin: A Critical Analysis of the Mammy, Mulatta, and Mistress in Black Female Representation.”

Cassandra White, doctoral candidate, in process.

Merritt Denman, doctoral candidate, in process.

Doctoral Committees (Member)

Mike Franz, graduate 2022. “The Best There Ever Was, The Best There Ever Will Be: Michael Jordan, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, and Performance of Surrogation in NBA and WBNA Basketball.”

Christy Rodriguez de Conte, graduate 2020. “Bad Jokes and Queer Folk: Creating the Mickee Faust Club.”

Sean Bartley, graduate, 2018. “The Performance of Site: Contemporary American Ambulatory Theatre and Audience Agency.”

Aaron C. Thomas, graduate, 2012. “Enter the Man.”

John (Ed) Shockley, doctoral candidate. (University Representative, Dept. of History)

John Combs, doctoral candidate. (University Representative, Dept. of Music)

Zachary Lloyd, doctoral candidate. (University Representative, Dept. of Music)

Jeff Paden, doctoral candidate. “Starving For Attention: Theatrical Representations and Political Performances of Irish Women and the Human Right to Life.”

Jennifer Parker, doctoral candidate.

Master’s Committees (Chair)

Mackenzie Bounds, graduate, 2020. “Repossessing Spectatorship in Immersive Theatre and Virtual Reality.”

Marisa Andrews, graduate, 2018. “The Closeted Autobiographer: Feminism, Religion, and Queerness in the Unstaged Closet Dramas of Djuna Barnes.”

Shelby Lunderman, graduate, 2016. “Reform through Radio: Constructing Juvenile Delinquency Within Buffalo’s Federal Theatre Project.”

Michelle A. Dougherty, graduate, 2012. “America’s Kingdom: Disneyland as a Performance of American Family Identity in the 1950s.”

Rebecca L. Ormiston, graduate, 2012. “‘I am the conjure’: sharon bridgforth and a Theatre of Multiplicity.”

Bryan W. Schmidt, graduate, 2012. “‘Welcome Home!’: Engendering Community Through Performance and Play at the Euphoria and Scorched Nuts Regional Burns.”

Scott C. Knowles, graduate, 2010. “Locating American Masculinity With(out)in the Male: Sam Shepard’s Kicking a Dead Horse, Neil LaBute’s Reasons to be Pretty, and Sarah Ruhl’s Late: A Cowboy Song.

Master’s Committees (Member)

Michael Valdez, graduate, 2018. “End/Ending/Ended: Staging Ecocritical Inversions of Place and Time.”

Elizabeth Edgeworth Sickerman, graduate, 2017. “Into the Limits: The Artist, The Audience, and the Practice of Self-Inflicted Violence in Performance Art.”

Joshua Inocencio, graduate, 2015. “Wreckages of Whiteness: White Male Sacrifices in the Context of Ritual Redress.”

Haddy C. Kreie, graduate, 2012. “Toward a Post/Colonial National Identity in the Theatre of Madagascar: Jean-Luc Raharimanana’s 47 and The Prophet and the President.

Irem Seçil Reel Sen, graduate, 2012. “Sema: Turkish National Identity in Motion.”

Amy Bredemeyer Klutsarits, graduate, 2011. “The Limitations and Possibilities of a Production: The Rocky Horror Show.”

Bachelor’s Honors Thesis Committees

Allison Crawford, anticipated 2022. (Chair) “Fostering Arts Accessibility Through Community-Based Youth Theatre.”

Sabrina Trinidad, anticipated 2023. (English Dept.) “Insult and Comedy in Act Two, Scene Three of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Adam Corson, graduate, 2018. (Economics Dept.) “The Effect of Arts Education on Student’s Future Academic Performance in Florida Public Schools.”

Sidney Turner, graduate, 2017. (English Dept.) “The Many Faces of Kate: Exploring Performance in Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer.

Jennifer Kellett, graduate, 2016. (Chair) “Sam Shepard and Objects: Site-Specific Immersive Theatre.”

Christian Meola, graduate, 2016. “The Past is Not Behind Us: Exposing the Familiar Space.”

Natalie Rankin, graduate, 2015. “Voicing Justice: Exploring the Case of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.”

Ashley Miskoff, graduate, 2011. (Chair) “The Interrogation of the American Dream in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins.

Alfred M. Heartley, graduate, 2011. “Madea’s Family History: A Critical Analysis of the Stage Plays and Films of Tyler Perry.”

Comprehensive Exams Committees

Zachary Lloyd, anticipated 2022 (Ph.D., Dept. of Music)

Rebecca Curran, anticipated 2023 (Ph.D.)

John Combs, progressed to candidacy, 2021 (Ph.D., Dept. of Music)

Merritt Denman, progressed to candidacy, 2020 (Ph.D.)

Laura Waringer, progressed to candidacy, 2020 (Ph.D)

Kasey Kopp, graduate, 2019 (M.A.)

Naomi-Li Longshore, graduate, 2019 (M.F.A. in Theatre Management)

John (Ed) Shockley, progressed to candidacy (Dept. of History), 2018 (Ph.D)

Cassandra White, progressed to candidacy, 2018 (Ph.D.)

Christy Rodriguez de Conte, progressed to candidacy, 2017 (Ph.D.)

Allison Gibbes, progressed to candidacy, 2017 (Ph.D.)

Aaron Ellis, progressed to candidacy, 2017 (Ph.D.)

Devair Jeffries, progressed to candidacy, 2016 (Ph.D.)

Deb Kochman, progressed to candidacy, 2016 (Ph.D.)

Anthony Gunn, progressed to candidacy, 2015 (Ph.D.)

Kate Pierson, progressed to candidacy, 2015 (Ph.D.)

Andrea Dudziak, graduate, 2012 (M.A.)

Meghan N. Hawkins, graduate, 2010 (M.A.)

Timothy Saunders, graduate, 2009 (M.A.)

Other Supervised Research

Ashley DeLuke, undergraduate research project, 2016. “Breaking Down Social Constructs in Greek Life.”

Kaci Palomino, undergraduate research project, 2016 (with Kris Salata). “Parts of Me are Not All Here: An Auto-Ethnographical Performance-Based Research Project.”