Passing in Academia/Becoming in Performance Classrooms

• In Event: Embodying Bridges in the Ivory Tower: Performances of Passing Academic Identity

Abstract

Performing “professor” or “student” in the academy often requires daily disavowals of working class and racial/ethnic identity. This performative paper explores complex negotiations of identity in universities and the potentially transformative “becomings” within the embodied community of performance studies classrooms. Weaving a professor’s working class background with performance pedagogy and perspectives and performances of first generation college students, “passing” becomes a lens for studying the rigors of “making the grade," “passing oneself off…,” “coming out,” and failing to pass.

Author

• Deanna Shoemaker, Monmouth University