Research Statement for Katherine Nigh
After receiving my MA in Performance Studies from New York University where I wrote my thesis on national performance of public grief and mourning, I continued to work with the Hemispheric Institute and with their affiliate artists including members of Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (of Peru), a world renowned theater collective known for their human rights work whom I focused on in my thesis research. Wanting to further pursue my interests in theatre and performance from the Americas as well as the intersections of theater and social justice, I received my PhD in 2011 from the Theatre and Performance of the Americas program at Arizona State University which decentralizes the white/European canon of literature and theory.
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In my dissertation, Performing Nation, Performing Trauma: Theatre and Performance After September 11th, Hurricane Katrina and the Peruvian Dirty War, under the direction of Dr. Tamara Underiner, I examined how theater and performance are utilized to respond to, document, memorialize and represent national traumas resulting from such historical crises as the Peruvian Dirty War, Hurricane Katrina and September 11th, as well as how they resist dominant narratives that construct these events as national traumas. I explored how national traumas illuminate who is included and excluded from larger performances of national identity and looked at performances that challenge those constructions of national belonging. In support of this research, I was awarded the ASU Graduate College Dissertation Completion Fellowship as well as the David Foster Latin American Studies Research Award.
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My book, Performing Contested Memories: Performance of Memory in a Post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission Peru is currently under contract with Seagull Press/University of Chicago Press and will be edited by Performance Studies scholar Richard Schechner. In light of the fact that over ten years has passed since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission turned in its final report, the book examines the impact and “efficacy” of the TRC’s work; I am seeking to problematize the notion of a “national memory” and “cohesive nation” that Truth and Reconciliation Commissions attempt to promote and create. This work will make an intervention in current discourse about performance, transitional justice and specifically Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. I recently published a peer-reviewed article titled, “Forgetting to Remember: Performance and Conflict in a Post TRC Peru” in a special edition on trauma in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism which began the process of developing my dissertation into a book proposal. During this past summer (2016) I went to Peru for the tenth time in twelve years to research the Lugar de Memoria, Tolerencia y Inclusion Social (the Museum of Memory, Tolerance and Social Inclusion) that opened last December to commemorate the Peruvian Dirty War. I spent nearly a month visiting the museum and doing interviews with a variety of social actors connected to the museum. I am currently developing this research into an article that will be submitted to the Journal of Latin American Studies by November. I have also submitted this research as a proposal for the “Museums and their Publics at Sites of Conflicted Memory” conference that will take place in Warsaw, Poland in March of 2017. I am also in the process of writing a book proposal that will be submitted to publishers by the end of January.
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I am also interested in researching performances that reclaim queer spaces. For this work I examine performances in Los Angeles and New Orleans that archive sites of queer belonging that have been shut down permanently as a result of the policing of queer spaces and queer sexual practices. This research and publication agenda will begin in the fall of 2017.
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My research is almost always inspired by a personal relationship I have with an artist or a particular community and involves ethnographic methodologies. I value research as an important mode for creating relationships between artist and academic, between scholar and community and between professor and student, as I try to connect what I am doing in my “research world” with what I am doing in the classroom thereby involving my students in my research and theater practice.
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"If we follow the frame of national trauma as a productive perspective on nations dealing with the aftereffects of violence, Nigh’s dissertation demonstrates that theatrical arts and performance actions have the ability to create spaces where those who have experienced violence can work through trauma collectively. They can create forums for testimony and understanding, while effectively remaking the nation through the identificatory practices of the audiences and performance practitioners. As theatres and performances respond to national traumas, they often allow for opportunities where audiences can find both healing and unity." Review by Dr. Aaron Thomas for Dissertation Reviews
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For a full review of my dissertation by Dr. Aaron Thomas please read: http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/6098
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