Professor Kelina Gotman

I came to King’s in 2008, after a PhD in Theatre at Columbia University, and teaching positions in cultural and critical theory, writing and performance at The New School and Bard College. I have also held visiting positions at Cornell University, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, and the Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, among others. My work centres on the critical history of concepts, disciplines and institutions, particularly engaging with choreographic history and philosophy. My monograph, Choreomania: Dance and Disorder (OUP 2018) engages with concept formation around ‘epidemic’ dance, neuromotor and psychiatric ‘disorder’ and crowd movements in nineteenth-century colonial medical and social scientific circles; Essays on Theatre and Change (Routledge 2018) experiments with practices of critical writing and the performance of written form. I have also co-edited Foucault’s Theatres (MUP 2020) with Tony Fisher, and edited the 4-volume Theories of Performance: Critical and Primary Sources (Bloomsbury 2022). Further translation work and work with language thinks the relationship of discourse and political form, particularly in Performance and Translation in a Global Ages (CUP, co-edited with Avishek Ganguly 2023). I received a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2022-2023 to develop my new book on critical histories of work, productivism and performativity.

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

Theatre, dance and performance history and philosophy · Cultural and critical practices of writing and the (bio)politics of form · Critical studies of science and medicine, including psychiatry, neuroscience and ‘health’ discourse · History and philosophy of disciplines and institutions · Language, translation and dramaturgy I am interested in hearing from potential research students working on the history and philosophy of theatre and performance, including dance; topics involving science, nature and performance, including medicine and psychiatry; projects on cultural and/or critical theory, including those engaging with practices of writing and intellectual life; work engaging closely with archival method; language; translation; the history of ideas; and the history and theory of disciplines and institutions; as well as dramaturgical and/or arts and heritage and museum practice. Projects that are international and/or interdisciplinary in scope are particularly welcome.

For more details, please see her full research profile.

Teaching

My teaching engages closely with questions of performance and practices of critique. Radically interdisciplinary, the work I offer in the classroom questions disciplinary genealogies and thinks how it is that we study and work. From experimental arts practice to anthropology, racism and feminist and gender theories, the teaching work that I do aims to query not just what but also how it is that we practice our intellectual and affective engagements in everyday educational and political life.

Expertise and public engagement

I work broadly with the arts and cultural sectors, most recently contributing to a major exhibition on dance at the Museu de Arte de São Paolo, as well as strategic redevelopment of the Medical Galleries at the National Science and Technology Museum of Norway. I have spoken in Vienna, Stockholm, Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt, Toulouse, Strasbourg and across the UK, among others, in venues ranging from dance clubs to galleries to think crowd movements and the political life of ‘dance’. Dialogues with theatre makers and others have led to ongoing collaborations with the Rambert School, the Russell Maliphant Dance Company, and many more, thinking ways choreographic practice is institutionalised. I have also contributed to strategy on the Performance Galleries (the Tanks) at the Tate Modern, and run projects among others with the English National Opera Baylis, Performing Medicine / Clod Ensemble, and the International New Dance Festival in Montreal. My work as a translator, director, curator, performer and director has led to collaborations on over two dozen further works internationally, including in theatre and arts festivals.

Selected publications

• Choreomania: Dance and Disorder (Oxford Studies in Dance Theory, Oxford University Press, 2018)
• Essays on Theatre and Change: Towards a Poetics Of (Routledge, 2018)
• Foucault’s Theatres, co-edited with Tony Fisher (Manchester University Press, 2020)
• Theories of Performance: Critical and Primary Sources, 4 volumes, editor (Bloomsbury, 2022)
• Articles and chapters in over thirty books and journals on subjects ranging from critical and cultural theory, translation, language, theatre and dance to literature and philosophical life