Biography
A.B., Harvard University, 2006; A.M., Harvard University, 2014; Ph.D., Harvard University, 2017
Rebecca Kastleman is a specialist in the drama, theater, and performance of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her research focuses particularly on modernist theater, while extending to stages in the US, Europe, and across the Anglophone world. Broadly speaking, her work examines how modern drama theorizes collectivity, both by exploring the intersections of dramatic literature with social thought and by tracking the implications of performance practice for social and political movements. Her first monograph, Profaning Acts: Drama After Religion on the Modern Stage, reveals how twentieth-century British and American dramatists took up the subject of religion to peer into the histories of their chosen art and to speculate about its potential futures. Scholarship related to this book and on adjacent subjects has appeared in venues including Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Modern Drama, American Quarterly, and PAJ. She is also at work on a second book, tentatively entitled Chorus and Collectivity, which investigates how modern and contemporary playwrights have reconceived of the theatrical chorus as a vehicle for generating and disseminating new social forms.
For further details on her research and teaching, see her website: rebeccakastleman.com
