Photo credit: Hedia Maron

Katherine Brewer Ball is a writer based in Brooklyn. They are Assistant Professor of Performance Studies in the Theater Department at Wesleyan University, where they previously served as the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Wesleyan’s Center for the Humanities from 2013 2014. They have also served as faculty at the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance. Brewer Ball's research and teaching interests include theater, visual culture, Black and Indigenous thought, feminist theory, queer studies, and psychoanalysis. They are currently finishing a book project, The Only Way Out Is In: The Racial & Sexual Performance of Escape, which traces contemporary literature, theater, and performance works by Glenn Ligon, Tony Kushner, Sharon Hayes, and Junot Díaz. They are also working on a second book project tentatively titled Unsettling Art Criticism and a queer teen memoir about the year 1997. Their writing has been published in Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, Artforum, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Criticism, RECAPS, Little Joe, Bomb Magazine, Dirty Looks, ASAP/Journal, TDR: The Drama Review, and by BOFFO and ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives. In addition to teaching, Brewer Ball curates performance and art events, including the NYC performance salon, Adult Contemporary, and publishes creative nonfiction.

Areas of concentration/research: 

Curatorial studies, queer studies, Indigenous studies, psychoanalysis