Theatre, Film & Dance, Cornell University

Overview

Nick Salvato (A.B., Princeton University; Ph.D., Yale University) is Assistant Professor of Theatre and a member of the graduate faculty of English.  He has published articles in such journals as Camera Obscura, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, TDR: The Drama Review, and Theatre Journal.  His article "Uncloseting Drama: Gertrude Stein and the Wooster Group," won the journal Modern Drama's award for Outstanding Essay of 2007.  This piece is adapted from his first book, Uncloseting Drama: American Modernism and Queer Performance, published in 2010 by Yale University Press as part of the series Yale Studies in English.  Likewise published in 2010 was "Gossip," a special issue that he guest-edited for Modern Drama, where he is also the book review editor.  He has begun a second book project, tentatively entitled "Obstruction," that investigates the value to intellectual work of putatively impedimental experiential states like embarrassment, laziness, and cynicism.

Research Overview

Nick Salvato's approach to the study of performance, literature, and culture is guided by a combination of close analysis, archival research, and theoretical argumentation. More specifically, he seeks to elaborate, complicate, and extend the purview of ideas about the modern, the minor, and their relationships to one another. In a variety of ways and contexts, he focuses attention on performances, representational practices, discourses, and dispositions that are figured (often dismissively) by critics as minor or that announce themselves deliberately as minor; and at the same time, he considers the ways in which the concept of minority influences or defines the modern, even as minority conceals the centrality of its definitional power and influence. 

Thus, the objects of his scrutiny include theatrical modes and genres that have been deliberately positioned as minor (closet drama) or dismissed by critics as minor (melodrama, parody, soap opera); survivalist forms of expression (camp) and species of discourse (gossip) that have been deployed by minoritarian subjects; aesthetic distinctions (amateur, kitsch, trash) by which cultural artifacts have been pejoratively categorized as minor; periods and styles of performance (early American theatre, the musical) that have been treated as minor in the university classroom; and figures and types (fag hags, tramps) whose marginalization and minorization have rendered them largely illegible in or unavailable to humanistic scholarship.

Currently Teaching

• THETR 2410 - Introduction to World Theatre II: Early Modernity
• THETR 3350 - Performative Modernism

Selected Publications

Book

• Uncloseting Drama: American Modernism and Queer Performance, Yale University Press (2010)

Articles

• “Fag Hag: A Theory of Effeminate Enthusiasms” (with Maria Fackler), Discourse (forthcoming)
• "A Horse's Husband: David Greenspan's' Queer Temporalities and the Politics of Same-Sex Marriage," Theatre Survey (2011)
• "'Ta Daaa': Presenting Pig Iron Theatre Company," TDR: The Drama Review (2010)
  
• "Editorial Comment: The Age of Gossipdom," Modern Drama 53:3 (2010)
  
• “Prosthetic Intimacies: Television, Performance Studies, and the Makings of (a) Life,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (2010)
• “Out of Hand: YouTube Amateurs and Professionals,” TDR: The Drama Review 53:3 (2009)
• “On the Bubble: The Soap Opera Diva’s Ambivalent Orbit,” Camera Obscura 65:2 (2007)
• “Uncloseting Drama: Gertrude Stein and the Wooster Group,” Modern Drama 50:1 (2007)
• Tramp Sensibility and the Afterlife of Showgirls," Theatre Journal 58:4 (2006)
• "Louis Zukofsky's Old English Sources for "A"-23," Notes and Queries 49:1 (2002)
  

Talks and Presentations

Invited Presentations (Selected)

• “Fag Hag Theory” (with Maria Fackler), Davidson College, Davidson, NC (2008)
• “Fag Hag Theory,” Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (2007)
• “‘Frontal Attack’: Ezra Pound’s Elektra,” Pomona College, Claremont, CA (2007)
• “Uncloseting Drama: Gertrude Stein and the Wooster Group,” Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (2006)
• “‘Two Vicious Minds Working as One’: Gertrude Stein and the Wooster Group,” Columbia University, New York, NY (2005)
  

Conference Presentations (Selected)

• "A Horse's Husband: David Greenspan, the Politics of Gay Marriage, and Queer Temporalities," Association for Theatre in Higher Education panel paper, Los Angeles, CA (2010)
• "'Personal Impersonal' Attention: Jackson Mac Low Performs Djuna Barnes," Association for Theatre in Higher Education panel paper, Los Angeles, CA (2010)
• "Alive and Kicking (Back): Current Trends in LGBT and Q Research," Association for Theatre in Higher Education roundtable discussion, Los Angeles, CA (2010)
  
• "'Everybody's Saint': Beatrice Robinson Wayne and the Precarious Embodiment of High Modernism," American Comparative Literature Association panel paper, New Orleans, LA (2010)
• "Lost in Translation? Ezra Pound and No Drama," Modern Language Association panel paper, Philadelphia, PA (2009)
  
• “Watching Dallas on YouTube: Digitized Nostalgia, Nostalgic Digitization,” American Society for Theatre Research seminar paper, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2009)
• “Bottoming Zukofsky, Topping Stein,” Modernist Studies Association panel paper, Montreal, Canada (2009) 
• “‘Have to Have’: Refashioning Four Saints in Three Acts,” Modernist Studies Association roundtable paper, Montreal, Canada (2009)
• "Eloise with a Z: Queer Childhood and Fag Hag Genealogies," Association for Theatre in Higher Education paper, New York, NY (2009)
• "Fag Hags and the City (Site: Madrid)," American Comparative Literature Association paper, Boston, MA (2009)
• "'Out of Hand': Amateur, Professional, and YouTube Performance," American Society for Theatre Research seminar paper, Boston, MA (2008)
• "Fag Hag Histories," Performance Studies International panel paper, Copenhagen, Denmark (2008)
• "Children Who Are Not Children: Gertrude Stein, Ned Rorem, and Modernist Melodrama," Association for Theatre in Higher Education panel paper, Denver, CO (2008)
• "Gertrude Stein in Hollywood," American Comparative Literature Association panel paper, Long Beach, CA (2008)

Current Professional Activities

• Guest Editor, Modern Drama, Special Issue on "Gossip" (2010)
• LGBT Focus Group Conference Planner, Association for Theatre in Higher Education (summer 2010-present)
• Book Review Editor, Modern Drama (spring 2010-present)
• Panel Organizer, "Waste Management in Modernity," Modernist Studies Association conference (spring 2010-fall 2010)
• Seminar Co-organizer, "Televisuality and Embodiment," American Society for Theatre Research Conference (spring 2010-fall 2010)
  

Awards and Distinctions

• Cornell Faculty Innovation in Teaching Grant (2009)
• Outstanding Essay, Modern Drama (2008)
• Mellon Faculty Seminar, "Performance and Interpretation" (2007)
• Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities (2005)
• Beinecke Library Summer Research Fellowship (2004)
• Mellon Dissertation Seminar, "Writing Performance History" (2003)
• Robert Franke Fellowship in the Humanities (2001-2003)
• Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies (2000-2001)