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Gwyneth Shanks

She/Her/Hers

Title

Assistant Professor of Performance, Theater and Dance

Department

Performance, Theater, and Dance

Information

Current Courses

CRS Title Sec
TD246 Art, Money, Labor: The Crisis of Capitalism A
TD247 Performing the Museum A
TD262A Colby Collaborative Company: Decolonizing Botany A
TD393 Seminar: Ways of Seeing A

Specialties

  • Performance Studies
  • Curatorial Practice
  • Museum Studies
  • Art History
  • Gender & Sexuality Studies
  • Critical Race Theory

Education

B.A., Macalester College, Theatre, magna cum laude
M.A., New York University, Performance Studies
PhD, University of California, Los Angeles, Performance Studies

Bio

Gwyneth Shanks is an Assistant Professor at Colby College. Prior to that, she held curatorial positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art through the Independent Study Program and at the Walker Art Center.

Broadly, her research considers how performance can propose strategies for revealing and dismantling colonial and racialized histories of representation in contemporary art. At Colby, she teaches courses that introduce students to performance studies, explore art institutions, and contextualize contemporary art and performance through race, gender, labor, and sexuality.

She is at work on a monograph that draws upon the aesthetic strategies of a variety of performance-based artists to reimagine the structures of contemporary art museums. Her writing has been published in Cultural Dynamics, Third Text, Performance Matters, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and X-TRA. Her writing also appears in a number of anthologies and art catalogues, including A.A.H.D.H. published with the Whitney Museum of Art and Side by Side: Collaborative Artistic Practices in the United States, 1960s-1980s with the Walker Art Center. Curatorially, she has worked with artists Julie Dash, Guadalupe Rosales, Mariana Valencia, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and Asif Mian, amongst others, and developed new commissions with Rabih Mroué, Laure Prouvost, shawné michaelain holloway, and the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

As a performer, she has worked with the Trisha Brown Dance Company, Maria Hassabi, Jérôme Bel, Meredith Monk, Marina Abramović, Alex Shilling, and Sarah Leddy. Her own performance projects have been commissioned and presented by LA Pride, Highways Performance Space, and Materials & Applications. She is currently at work on two site-specific, collaborative artistic projects, supported by the MAP Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts.

For additional information, please visit: www.gwynethshanks.com.