Enter the 35th Annual Student Essay Contest! Deadline 15 June 2024

You can now enter the 35th Annual Student Essay Contest (2024). $1,000 to the Winner! The winning essay will be announced in winter 2024 and published in TDR (along with a profile of the winner’s department). TDR covers dance, theatre, music, performance art, visual art, media, sound, architecture, performative behavior, rituals, and sports—emphasizing the experimental, the critical, the provocative, and the interdisciplinary. Entries should be in English, 6,000 to 9,000 words in TDR style (see the TDR writer's guidelines for details) with author’s name and email on title page only. Send all submissions via ScholarOne. In order to be eligible for the TDR Student Essay Contest, submissions must be written by a matriculated student.

Past Winners

34th Annual SEC (2023)

Kathy Fang (Columbia University), “'You act as Human, and I will act as AI': Technological Rehearsals at the Interface."

Honorable mentions: 

Ashlyn Barnett (University of Colorado-Boulder), "Native North America in Motion: Performances of Resistance and Resilience" 

Georgia Phillips-Amos (Concordia University, "Attunement to the Great Near with Rebecca Belmore’s Wave Sound" 

33rd Annual SEC (2022)

No winner

32nd Annual SEC (2021)

“Breathing Bricks: Nut Brother’s Dust Project and the Politics of Particulate Matter” by Alex Knapp, Northwestern University (Abstract).

31st Annual SEC (2020)

Danielle A.D. Howard, UCLA, “The (Afro) Future of Henry Box Brown: His-story of Escape(s) through Time and Space" (Abstract).

30th Annual SEC (2019)

Derek Baron, NYU, "Conjuring Abolition Phonography in A Record Album Interpretation" (Abstract).

29th Annual SEC (2018)

Kimberly Skye Richards, UC-Berkeley, "Crude Optimism: Romanticizing Alberta's Oil Frontier at the Calgary Stampede" (Abstract).

28th Annual SEC (2017)

Joanna Ruth Evans, NYU, “Unsettled Matters, Falling Flight: De-colonial Protest and the Becoming-Material of the Rhodes Statue” (Abstract). The runner up is Kat Frances Lieder, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Performing Loitering in the Indian City: Neoliberal Feminism and the Politics of Affect” (Abstract).

27th Annual SEC (2016)

Lilian Mengesha, Brown University, "Feeling Impotent: Becoming the Defecting Witness in Regina José Galindo’s PERRA" (Abstract).

26th Annual SEC (2015)

Winner: Giulia Vittori, Stanford University, “A Meditation on Stillness: Ann Carlson’s Picture Jasper Ridge” (Abstract).

Honorable Mentions: 

Jennie Goldstein, Stony Brook University, "Dance History in Contemporary Visual Art Practice: Kelly Nipper's Weather Center" (Abstract)

Guanda Wu, University of Minnesota, "Mustache as Resistance: Representations and Receptions of Mei Lanfang's Masculinity" (Abstract).

25th Annual SEC (2014)

Kirstin Smith, Queen Mary University - London, "Stumping and Stunts: Walking in Circles in the 'Go-As-You-Please' Race" (Abstract).

24th Annual SEC (2013)

Naomi Bragin, UC-Berkeley, "Shot and Captured: Turf Dance, YAK Films, and the Oakland, California, R.I.P. Project" (Abstract). This article was also awarded the ASTR 2015 Gerald Kahan Scholar's Prize.

Gillian Turner Young, Columbia University, "An Audience Is Divided: Benjamin Patterson, Clifford Owens, and the Politics of Representation" (Abstract).

23rd Annual SEC (2012)

David Calder, Northwestern University, "Making Space for a Creative Economy: The Work of La Machine" (Abstract).

Michelle Liu Carriger, Brown University, "'The Unnatural History and Petticoat Mystery of Boulton and Park': A Victorian Sex Scandal and the Theatre Defense" (Abstract). This article was also awarded the ASTR 2014 Gerald Kahan Scholar's Prize.

22nd Annual SEC (2011)

Helen Jaksch, NYU, "The Empty Chair is Not So Empty: Ghosts and the Performance of Memory in Post-Katrina New Orleans" (Abstract).

21st Annual SEC (2010)

Winner: Michael Shane Boyle, UC-Berkeley, "The Criminalization of Dissent: Protest Violence, Activist Performance, and the Curious Case of the VolxTheaterKarawane in Genoa" (Abstract).

Runner-up: Rania Jawad, NYU, "Staging Resistance in Bil'in: The Performance of Violence in a Palestinian Village" (Abstract).

20th Annual SEC (2009)

Melissa Barton, University of Chicago, "'Speaking a Mutual Language': The Negro People's Theatre in Chicago" (Abstract).

19th Annual SEC (2008)

Winner: Zack Whitman Gill, UC-San Diego, "Rehearsing the War Away: Perpetual Warrior Training in Contemporary US Army Policy" (Abstract).

Runner-up: James Dennen, Brown University, "On Reception of Improvised Music" (Abstract).