Dr. Kelsey Blair

Contact information

Email:

kelsey.blair@concordia.ca

Biography

About

I am a theatre, performance, and cultural studies scholar, a university teacher, an author, and a freelance writer.

My research focuses on multiple interconnected areas: performance studies; sport and performance; Broadway musical theatre; circus studies; affect theory; spectacle performance; performing gender and sexuality; performative utterances; theatre audience studies; and the impacts of community-engaged writing, theatre, and film projects.

I am passionate about researching the epistemological, affective, cultural, and socio-political effects of different types of popular contemporary performance for both performers and audience members. I am also invested in exploring the relationship between discourse, embodiment, and operations of power in the twenty-first century and curious about the impacts of writing pedagogy and practice.

Currently, I teach courses in professional writing, creative writing, and video games as literature in the Department of English

Teaching activities

Teaching Activities 2022-2023

English 396 Content Creation and Management in Professional Writing

English 395 Technical Writing

English 429 Advanced Studies in Creative Writing (Children's Literature)

English 447 Advanced Studies in Literary Theory

English 255 Video Games and/as Literature

Publications

Selected Publications

Forthcoming:

Sport and Performance in the Twenty-First Century, Routledge

With Megan Johnson. “I am Invictus”: Parasport, the Invictus Games, and
Disability Performance in Canada.” Theatre Research in Canada.

With Kelsey Jacobson, Jenny Salisbury & Scott Mealey. “The Concerted
Observers: Exploring a Polyvocal Approach to Audience Sense-making,” Joint Issue, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism and Global Performance Studies, JDTC, 36.1, pp. 75-93.

“Empty Gestures: Performative Utterances and Allyship,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 35.2, pp. 53-73.

“The Believability of Basketball: The Multiple Bodies of the Female Performer
in The Tall Girls.” Chow, Broderick & Eero Laine eds. Sports Plays. Routledge, pp 99-114.

The Politics of Performing the Butterfly Stroke: Yusra Mardini and the 2016
Olympic Refugee Team.” Walsh, Shannon (ed). An Anthology of Performance, Sport, and Physical Culture. Routledge, pp. 96-110.

“Hermione and Juliet’s ‘Power to Die’: Animacy and Agency for
Shakespeare’s Female Characters.” Gamboa, Brett & Lawrence Switzky (eds), Shakespearean Theatre and the Non-Human World in History, Theory, and Performance, pp. 123-133.

“Memory in Two Voices: An Aesthetics of Care in Seniors’ Performance
Groups.” Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 67-71.

“The 2012 Olympic Badminton Scandal: Match-Fixing, Code of Conduct
Documents, and Women’s Sport.” The International Journal of Sport History, vol 35, no 2-3, pp. 264-276.

“Broomsticks and Barricades: Performing Empowerment in Wicked and Les
Misérables.” Journal of Musical Theatre Studies, vol 10.1, 2016, pp 55-68, 2016.

Books - Fiction

Books

Tough Call. Lorimer & Company, 2018

Making the Team. Lorimer &Company, 2016

Ugly Kicks. Lorimer &Company, 2015

Pick and Roll. Lorimer &Company, 2014

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