Dr. Stephanie Batiste

Dr. Stephanie Leigh Batiste is a Professor of English, Black Studies, Theater and Dance, and Comparative Literature at UC Santa Barbara and Director of the Hemispheric South/s Research Initiative. Professor Batiste’s research areas include Race and Racism, Performance Studies, African American Literature and Culture, American Studies, Cultural Studies, and U.S. History. Professor Batiste’s award-winning book, Darkening Mirrors: Imperial Representation in Depression Era African American Performance (Duke University Press, 2011) focuses on the relationship between power and identity in black performance cultures to reimagine Black self-conception, national belonging, and modernism. Her current book project focuses on affect and feeling in relation to violence and death in Black millennial performance in Los Angeles.

She is co-editor of the NYU Press Book Series Performance and American Cultures. Batiste is a poet, playwright, and actor. She has written three mixed-form plays: Stacks of Obits, Young Love Found and Lost: Six Poems in a Circle, and Blue Gold & Butterflies and collaborated with students in developing collaborative adaptations and original work. Her solo show Stacks of Obits about street murder in Los Angeles has been performed nationally and internationally.