Organizers: Kim Solga, Amala Poli, and Masha Kouznetsova
Location: Room 1140 – Pavilion André Aidenstadt – 2920 chemin de la tour – Université de Montréal
(Building 19 on the UdM Map)
In-Person Session
Scholars of theatre and performance studies know that performance is a “mobile critical paradigm,” as Kathleen Gallagher and Barry Freeman provocatively write in the introduction to In Defense of Theatre (2015). Our deep familiarity with performance’s power as a cross-disciplinary learning modality, however, means we can easily forget that this isn’t common knowledge. We know that working through performance can lead to everything from technical innovation and social change to increased individual and community wellbeing; the leaders of our major institutions – including our universities – often have no clue.
Over the last three years we have been engaged in a campus-based teaching research project that begins from the premise that performing arts-led, interdisciplinary teaching can have profound real-world benefits for undergraduate students from a wide range of fields. Our project ran a pilot class with 18 students from 7 of Western’s 13 faculties in 2022-23, and our data from their experience underscores how utterly transformative the class was for all of them – especially those from STEM backgrounds.
We’re thrilled at what we’ve achieved so far, but we also know we aren’t alone: many of us are working to integrate performance into broader curricular change across the country. In this roundtable, we will gather a mix of those voices to hear what you are doing, how you are doing it, and (especially) how you are communicating performance’s powers to innovate across fields and to support students, faculty, staff, and community wellbeing to those who need most to hear about it.
Kim Solga is Professor of Theatre Studies at Western University. From 2021-24 she held the Arts and Humanities Teaching Fellowship in Western’s Centre for Teaching and Learning. From 2021-23, she held one of four Experiential Learning Innovation Scholarships at Western, which sponsored the research that frames this roundtable.
Amala Poli Amala Poli is a PhD candidate in English at Western University and the author of Writing the Self in Illness (2019). She is a health humanities scholar, whose doctoral research examines the relevance of sleep paralysis narratives in the contemporary sleep crisis. Her other areas of interest include how creativity and community-engaged learning can foster wellbeing at universities.
Masha Kouznetsova is PhD Candidate in Art and Visual Culture at Western University. She received her MFA in Visual Arts in 2023 at Western University and her BFA in Studio Art in 2012 at Georgia State University. From 2012-2021, she lived in San Francisco, CA where she taught art in a private high school, worked as a museum educator, and practiced visual art.