Misty De Berry

Assistant Professor

Misty De Berry

Interdisciplinarity is a touchstone to my work as an academic and artist. I began my training in the academy in an arts conservatory where I studied classical acting and dance-movement theatre. My subsequent creative scholarship and practice led me to extensive training in Transformative Justice across the greater Chicago metropolitan area, specific to Black & Afro-Caribbean queer communities navigating repair after encounters with gender-based violence. My turn to theoretical practice has thus been intimately shaped by an organic amalgamation of methods, analytics, and conceptual frameworks. 

My scholarship, service, and arts practice thus centers wisdom inherited primarily from black feminist thought, queer of color critique, performance and black critical theory, along with studies in transformative justice and disability studies. I am currently working on my first manuscript, In Due Time: Performance and the Psychic Life of Black Debt, which explores routine modes of debt and indebtedness in the lives of black queer femmes, and their engagement with time-based media and durational gestures to dismantle such routines. My most resent performance, little sister: an Afro-Temporal Solo-Play, tells the story of a nomadic child spirit who shape-shifts across several incarnations of Afro-Caribbean queer women—spanning the Antebellum South to present moment Chicago. 

My ongoing creative and community practice engages an interplay between core conceptual aspects, aesthetic musings, and practical lines of flight taken up in my critical research. Currently I am serving as co-founder and co-director of "Promiscuous Care and Performance," a national humanities institute housed at Dartmouth College that centers scholars, artists, and activists working across the fields of performance studies, disability justice, and Black & Afro-Caribbean Feminist thought.

Education

Northwestern University

PhD 2020- Performance Studies 

Evanston, IL

Columbia College Chicago

Master of Fine Arts 2010- Interdisciplinary Arts and Media

Chicago, IL

University of North Carolina School of the Arts

Bachelors of Fine Arts Certificate 2001- Classical Theatre & Acting

Winston-Salem, NC 

 

Specialized Areas of Research

•Gender, Race, and Sexuality

• Black Feminist Thought

• Queer of Color Critique

• Black Critical Theory

• Queer Disability Studies

• Durational Performance, Time-Based Media

• Performance Art, Theatre Practice

• Usui Reiki & Contemplative Practices

 

Selected Awards & Distinctions

· 2023 -  2025, Co-Director, Humanities Institute, "Promiscuous Care and Performance," Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth College

· 2019 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Literature, and the program in Women’s and Gender Studies

· 2018 Critical Theory Summer Fellowship, University of Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France

· 2017 Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, ThreeWalls, Chicago IL

· 2016, Performance-in-Practice Fellowship, Chicago Architectural Foundation, Chicago IL

· 2016, Archival Fellowship, Black Metropolis Research Consortium, University of Chicago, Chicago IL

· 2005 Radio Choice, ‘Best Afternoon Play,’ BBC Radio Commission, New York, NY 

· 2004 Edinburgh Fringe First Ensemble Award, ‘Best Original Script,’ Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland

· 2002 Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DCLAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR THE GIFT (2018)

 

Scholarly and Creative Material (Publications) 

• 2024 “Turning Towards One Another,” co-authored w. Ann Russo. Feminist Collaborations of Radical Interconnectedness: Intersectional and Transnational Approaches for Teaching and Learning. Eds. Isis Nusair and Barbara Shaw. University of Illinois Press.

• 2016 “little sister: An Afro-Temporal Solo-Play” with introduction, “Framing little sister with notes on how to be with her.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 21.3, special issue, “Loving Transgressions: Queer of Color Bodies, Affective Ties, and Transformative Community,” edited by Francesca Royster and Aimee Carrillo Row, eds. 323-350.

• 2015 “little sister: A Black Speculative Solo-Performance.” Ed. Gina Athena Ulysse. E misférica: Caribbean Rasanblaj 12.1. hemisphericinstitute.org. Excerpt and performance.

•2014 “Milkweed.” solo/black/woman: Script, Interviews, Essay. Eds. E. Patrick Johnson and Ramón Rivera-Severa. Northwestern University Press. 301-327.THE MINIATURISTS (DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2022).

 

Creative Work Featured 

•2016 Royster, Francesca and Aimee Carrillo. “Introduction.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 21.3, special issue, “Loving Transgressions: Queer of Color Bodies, Affective Ties, and Transformative Community,” edited by Francesca Royster and Aimee Carrillo Row. 243-253. 

•2014 Monroe, Raquel. “Interview with Misty De Berry.” solo/black/woman: Scripts, Interviews, Essay. Eds E. Patrick Johnson and Ramon Rivera-Severa. Northwestern University Press. 340-349. 

•2014 Royster, Francesca. “Witness and the Politics of Readdressing Black Pain and Pleasure”. solo/black/woman: Scripts, Interviews, Essay. Eds E. Patrick Johnson and Ramon Rivera- Severa. Northwestern University Press. 350-362.