Emily Roxworthy

office: Galbraith Hall 320
email: eroxworthy@ucsd.edu

Biography

Emily Roxworthy (M.A. Cornell, Ph.D. Northwestern) is a scholar working at the intersection of theatre history and performance studies, with particular interests in interculturalism, Asian/Asian American theatre, digital media, and role playing. Her articles have been published in TDR, Theatre Journal, Theatre Research International, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Modern Drama, The Journal of Asian American Studies, and other scholarly journals. For her article "'Manzanar, the eyes of the world are upon you': Performance and Archival Ambivalence at a Japanese American Internment Camp," she received both the 2008 Outstanding Article Award (from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education) and the 2008 Gerald Kahan Scholar's Prize (from the American Society for Theatre Research). Professor Roxworthy’s first book, The Spectacle of Japanese American Trauma: Racial Performativity in World War II, was published by the University of Hawaii Press in 2008. Her latest project is creating a 3D role-playing video game that reconstructs interracial and intercultural performances staged during WWII at the Rohwer and Jerome internment camps that were in the Arkansas Delta during the era of Jim Crow. A collaboration with the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), this digital project, titled DRAMA IN THE DELTA, received a Digital Humanities Start-Up Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Professor Roxworthy teaches a range of doctoral seminars on performance theory and world theatre history, as well as undergraduate courses including Asian American Theatre, Ancient and Medieval Theatre, Solo Performance, and Great Performances on Film. When time allows, she also adapts and directs non-dramatic texts for the stage. Professor Roxworthy is also affiliate faculty in the Department of Ethnic Studies and a member of the California Cultures in Comparatives Perspectives program at UCSD.