WHY PS @ NYU
As soon as I got here it felt like home. I came to the department in 1995. Before that, I didn't even know the field existed, but as soon as I got here, I felt like I'd found my home. I'm not leaving! That's partly because of my extraordinary colleagues. At the English Department at Princeton, which was where I was coming from, I was kind of a weird outlier, trying to stuff dance and music into my literature classes. But here, everyone was working between disciplines, media, genres, genders - and often between scholarship and artistic production. This was true of the students as well, and over the years they've surely shaped my work as much as I've shaped theirs. I take inspiration from them. They turn me on to new music and dance and writing - as well as their often thrilling revolutionary projects!
Of course it helps that we're located in New York, downtown, in a very porous neighborhood where performance abounds. You couldn't avoid it if you wanted to. I mean, seeing it, just strolling through Washington Square Park, which is basically our back yard. But you also can't really avoid doing it, or realizing you're doing it. You become a part of a performance collective the minute you set foot in this space. It's a profoundly collaborative, quirky, rich and fascinating environment.