Dr. Frederick C. Corey
Frederick C. Corey conducts research in the areas of performance, narrative, and culture, with a focus on the gay male body. He has published widely in journals and edited collections in communication and performance studies. His articles have appeared in Text and Performance Quarterly, Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, Western Journal of Communication, Journal of Homosexuality, Communication Studies, and Communication and the Disenfranchised. His work in HIV education has been funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Corey received his BS in political science from Central Michigan University, MS in communication from Southern Illinois University, and PhD in communication from the University of Arizona. Corey is Dean of University College and Director of the School of Letters and Sciences. As dean, Corey oversees academic advising and major exploration for students who have not yet selected a major. As school director, he is responsible for the coordination of general education and liberal arts courses on the ASU Downtown Phoenix campus and the university-wide Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies degree program.

Dr. Olga Idriss Davis
Olga Idriss Davis is Associate Professor of Performance Studies and Women’s Studies in The Hugh Downs School of Human Communication. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and is an alumna of The Juilliard School in drama. Professor Davis made her television debut in a recurring role as Student Nurse on the ABC daytime drama, “General Hospital.” Her stage debut occurred with the late Rock Hudson, Claire Trevor, and Leif Erickson in the bi-centennial production of “John Brown’s Body” directed by John Houseman. As a Rockefeller fellow, she conducted research on the performative and liberatory nature of Black female slave narratives. Her current scholarship extends the role of narrative in the lives of African American survivors of the Tulsa, Oklahoma Race Riot of 1921. Inspired by a graduate course created by Davis that explores survival discourse, the show entitled Performing Survival: Narratives of Cultural Memory, Struggle, and Resistance was directed by Davis and performed by graduate students of the course. The show and course offered a sobering look at the inner experiences of survivors of the Jewish holocaust, Native American boarding schools, Tulsa Race Riot, and Japanese American internment camps.

Davis’ research interests include ritual and identity in the African Diaspora, womanist theory, and the performance of African American women’s rhetorical and performative traditions. Her originally-authored dramatic performance entitled, “Standing on the Hyphen: Weaving Threads of African-American Women’s Identity, interrogates the racialized and gendered spaces of hyphenated identity through the metaphor of the quilt. A co-edited book with Marsha Houston entitled, Centering Ourselves: African American Feminist and Womanist Studies of Discourse, examines the lived experience of Black women’s communication and is now available by Hampton Press.

Dr. Amira De la Garza
Amira De la Garza uses performance, embodied methods and creative writing in (auto) ethnographic research and studies of culture, spirituality, and narrative identity.

Jennifer Linde

Jennifer Linde is a lecturer in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication and the artistic director of The Empty Space. She has designed and taught performance studies courses relating to communication and creativity, oral interpretation of literature, performance of sexuality, performance ethnography, performance of literature by women, performance theory, and methods for adapting scholarship to the stage.

In her position as artistic director, Linde serves as advisor, script consultant, and director of a variety of laboratory performance presented by faculty, and undergraduate and graduate students at The Empty Space.

Dr. Sarah Tracy (affiliated Faculty)
Sarah Tracy is an active participant in performance studies at ASU. Her interests include alternative ethnographic representations and transforming scholarship to the stage. She has worked on two trigger script performances at The Empty Space; Navigating the Cruise and Bullied. These performances were adaptations of Tracy's research on cruise ship sexual harassment and workplace bullying.

Dr. Kristin B. Valentine (Emeritus)
Professor of Communication and Women’s Studies

Ph.D. Univ. of Utah

M.A. Univ. of Washington

B.S. Univ. of Wisconsin

Kristin Valentine is Professor Emerita of Communication and Women’s Studies at Arizona State University, and Adjunct Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, Victoria University at Wellington, New Zealand. She was academically educated at the University of Wisconsin (B.S.), University of Washington (M.A.), and the University of Utah (Ph.D). Her research focuses on performance studies, specifically on (a) fieldwork-based ethnographies of cultural performances in Arizona, Spain, and New Zealand; and (b) communication for/with incarcerated women. She teaches at the Federal Prison Camp for Women, Phoenix. She was project director of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant that featured the performance and discussion of contemporary Western American fiction in the public libraries of the Phoenix valley. She directed interpreters theatre productions including Beowulf and Highly Classified: Narratives of ASU’s Classified Staff.

Selected Publications:
“Unlocking the Doors for Incarcerated Women Through Performance and Creative Writing,” Handbook of Performance Studies, ed. Judith Hamera and D. Soyini Madison (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006): 309-24.
“Healing at the Coast of Death in Spanish Galicia: The Romería to Our Lady’s Boat.” Journal of American Folklore 118 (2005): 475-84.
“Folklore of Spanish Galicia.” The Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Folklore. Vol. 3 (Europe), ed. William M. Clements (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006): 202-11.
“Yaqui Easter Ceremonies and the Ethics of Intense Spectatorship.” Text and Performance Quarterly 22 (2002): 280-96.
Interlocking Pieces: Twenty Questions for Analyzing Literature . Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1991.