Assistant Professor of Theatre and Dance and Latin American Studies
Theatre and performance studies, with emphasis in critical theory; transnationalism; gender and feminist criticism; oral history; ethnography and multimedia documentary methodologies; live art movements

lnielsen@macalester.edu

Professor Nielsen's research addresses the intersections of the performing arts, politics, and the state. Neoliberalism and Global Theatres: Performance Permutations (2012) studies the complex relationships between the arts and free market ideologies, globally. Nielsen examines the premises of neoliberal political economies that advertise the entrepreneurial model of artistic work as the laudable way to negotiate neoliberalism and finance capital ‘from below,’ while ignoring the urgent pressures that the typically nonprofit artists experience globally. “At issue,” says Nielsen, “is the question of whether the conjunctions of neoliberal ideologies and financialization can deliver better futures—and for whom.” 

Nielsen's next book projects include Performance/Documents/Rights, where she is researching performance practices in the multidisciplinary arts (from theatre and dance to body/performance art and puppets) that find ways to document and contest rights strategies. Using documentary and aesthetic theory, feminist and queer theory, and legal and political theory, Nielsen theorizes artistic work that advance and critique rights rhetorics. Another book, The Grid: Sacrifice Plays in the Heterotopias of Beisbol Modernities, theorizes the international division of cultural labor in the counterconquest performances of Dominican baseball.  

Professor Nielsen serves on the Steering Committees of the Latin American Studies Program, the Humanitarianism and Human Rights Concentration, and as a founding member ofthe Critical Theory Concentration.

AREAS OF RESEARCH AND TEACHING EXPERTISE

Performance Studies; Critical Theory; Critiques of Subjectivity, Movement, and the State; Modernism and the International Avante-Gardes, especially in the Americas; Gender and Feminist criticism; Oral History; Documentary Theory.

MACALESTER COURSES

Theatre and Performance in the Twin Cities 
Introduction to Theatre Studies
Sources of Global Performance
Performance Studies Praxis
Performance Theory Seminar
Performance/Documents/Rights
The Oral History Project
Rights and Resistance: Latin American Theatre and Film
Feminist Theatres

OTHER COURSES TAUGHT

Contemporary Latin@ Performance
Sports Performances
Theatre and Globalization
Theatre and the Law
Latin American and Latin@ Literatures

Awards and Honors

In 2010, Lara was nominated for the Best Educator award by the Macalester College Student Council. When Lara was in the Department of Drama at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, her teaching was honored with the David Payne Carter Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2006. Prior to NYU, Lara was also a Fellow with The Five College's Crossroads in the Studies of the Americas (CISA), where she taught at Hampshire and Amherst Colleges, in Western Massachusetts.

PUBLICATIONS

Neoliberalism and Global Theatres: Performance Permutations, coedited with Patricia Ybarra (Palgrave July 2012)

The Grid: Sacrifice Plays in the Heterotopias of Beisbol Modernities

"Heterotopic Transformations: The (Il)liberal Neoliberal," in Neoliberalism and Global Theatres: Performance Permutations, Lara D. Nielsen and Patricia Ybarra, eds., Palgrave 2012

“Working the Field with Oral History: Talking Towards the Research Encounter in Theatre and Performance Studies,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Fall 2009 

"Specters of Exchange: Rights and Resources in Loisaida Liberation Theology Passion Play Performance," Performance Research,  2009

"The Oral History Project: Practice-Based Research in Theatre and Performance" in Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research: Scholarly Acts and Creative Cartographies, edited by Shannon Rose Riley and Lynette Hunter. Palgrave 2008

“Institutionalizing Ensembles: Thinking Theatre, Performance, and ‘The Law,’” in Law, Culture, and the Humanities Vol. 4, No. 2, 156-178, 2008

“Globalization and the Work of Theatre” Contemporary Theatre Review v16 n 1, special issue on Theatre and Globalization, February 2006

“Baseball as Cultural Policy: The Law and the Anomaly of Performance,” Studies in Law, Politics, and Society v 29, 2003

“Garbage, Gone,” Women & Performance September 2002

REVIEWS:

TDR Book Review (2012): Performing South Africa's Truth Commission: Stages of Transition, by Catherine M. Cole, Indiana University press 2009

e-misférica book review (2011): Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment, by Rebecca Schneider

Theatre Journal Book Review (2011): Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class, by David Savran

TDR book review (2011): Performing Conquest: Five Centuries of Theater, History, and Identity in Tlaxcala, Mexico, by Patricia Ybarra 

TDR book review (2007): Tree: belief/culture/balance, by Ralph Lemon

Theater Journal performance review (2005): “Charlie Victor Romeo”

Theatre Journal book review (1996): Negotiating Performance: Gender, Sexuality, and Theatricality in Latin/o America by Taylor and Villegas, 1994; El Teatro Campesino: Theatre in the Chicano Movement by Broyles-González 1994; Hispanic Theatre in New York by de la Roche 1995

LINKS

ASTR (http://www.astr.org/)
ATHE (http://www.athe.org/)
PSi (http://psi-web.org/)
LASA (http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/)
ASA (http://www.theasa.net/)
MLA (http://www.mla.org/)

FOUNDATIONAL TRAINING/EDUCATION

PhD: Performance Studies, New York University

MA: Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota (and the program in Feminist and Gender Studies)