Jennifer Goodlander

Jennifer Goodlander

Director of Undergraduate Studies

Associate Professor, Comparative Literature

Adjunct, Department of Theatre, Drama, and Contemporary Dance

Director of ACT Humanities Program, Collins Living-Learning Center

Affiliate, Gender Studies

Affiliate, Folklore and Ethnomusicology

Affiliate, Cultural Studies

Affiliate, Southeast Asian and ASEAN Studies (past Director, 2017-2019)

Education

  • Ph.D., Interdisciplinary Arts, Ohio University, Athens, OH, 2010
  • M.F.A., Asian Performance-Directing, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, 2004
  • B.A., Theatre and Women's Studies, Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI, 1997

About Jennifer Goodlander

Professor Goodlander’s main area of research and teaching centers on tensions between tradition and modernity as expressed in transnational performance, literature, and other arts—primarily in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. She is especially interested in the productive boundary between text, embodiment, material culture, and visual representation as investigated through an ethnographic lens.

She has received many grants and fellowships for her performance work and research on Asian performance, including a Fulbright Fellowship to Indonesia and funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. As a theatre director and puppet artist she has worked nationally and internationally. Professor Goodlander is the recent past president for the Association of Asian Performance.

Her first two books -- Women in the Shadows: Gender, Puppets, and the Power of Tradition in Bali (2016) and Puppets and Cities: Articulating Identity in Southeast Asia (2018) focus on puppetry – one of the oldest and most dynamic performances in Southeast Asia.

Currently, Dr. Goodlander is working on several projects related to intercultural performance theory in order to trouble the Western hegemonic dynamic generally associated with intercultural performance by drawing on recent theories of global Asia(s).