PRAXIS, INC: 2026
PRAXIS, INC: Innovate, Network, Collaborate is the department's annual community event in which we invite current students, faculty and alumni to come together and share their skills in the field of Performance Studies, engage in important conversations, and stay connected with colleagues and peers..
This year's program will include sessions by: Atlas Akeem Ali (B.A. '19), Alex Belluck (M.A. Student), Taylor C. Black (Ph.D. '26), Melia Chendo (M.A. Student), Dr. D. Elizabeth Cohen (M.A. '76), Jameel Amir Finch-Martin (M.A. Student), Sarah Guilbault (M.A. '21), Amanda Krische (M.A. Student), Eva Margarita (M.A. '20), Raven Malouf-Renning (M.A. ‘25), Joey Mauro (M.A. '24), Noah Ortega (M.A. '16), Denisse Griselda Reyes (M.A. Student), Mateo Rodriguez-Hurtado (M.A. '20), Savyon Vaknin (Ph.D. Student, M.A. '24), and Nicki Yost (M.A. '25).
KEYNOTE:
One More Try, or, Teacher, There Are Things that I Don’t Want to Learn
The loss of a teacher, or mother, or friend, or anyone you love isn’t something you can or really should move on from. There is no escaping loss or grief, since losing is a constitutive part of living and loving. This talk stages a return to the scene of a classroom some time ago as a return to the braided questions of melancholia and the weighty inheritance of queer of color loss. Drawn from a larger project on unfinished grief, it weaves together performance theory, queer theory, Asian American studies, and Black studies to consider the fraught, always incomplete, and risky work of loving, losing, grieving, and living on as a practice and process of living together and living with loss.
Joshua Chambers-Letson (PS PhD '09) is the Chair of Performance Studies and Professor of Performance Studies and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. With expertise in performance theory, queer of color critique, and race and ethnic studies, JCL is the author of Unfinished Grief: Queer Love and Loss (forthcoming NYU Press 2026) and is the author of After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life (winner of the 2019 Outstanding Book Award from the Association of Theatre in Higher Education and the 2019 Erroll Hill Award from the American Society for Theatre Research) and A Race So Different: Law and Performance in Asian America (winner of the 2014 Outstanding Book Award from ATHE). JCL is also the co-editor of José Esteban Muñoz’s The Sense of Brown with Tavia Nyong’o, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s China Trilogy: Three Parables of Global Capital with Christine Mok, and series co-editor of NYU Press’s Sexual Cultures series with Tavia Nyong’o and Ann Pellegrini. In addition to a host of publications in scholarly journals, art writing appears in publications for the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum, the Whitney Museum of Art, MoMA, the 57th Venice Biennale, Boston ICA, SCHUNCK, the Haus der Kulturen der Velt, and SAVVY Contemporary.
SCHEDULE:
10:30-10:45 - Check in/ Breakfast
10:45-11:30 - Session 1
Dr. D. Elizabeth Cohen (M.A. '76) - Introduction to Arts-Charged Reiki(™): Reiki for Creatives
Denisse Griselda Reyes (M.A. Student) & Melia Chendo (M.A. Student) - Get on the Couch
Eva Margarita (M.A. '20) - Performing with breath
11:40-12:25 - Session 2
Sarah Guilbault (M.A. '21) - Our Grief is Interwoven
Atlas Akeem Ali (B.A. '19) - WHAT COMES NEXT: AI & Journalism as Performative Writing
Jameel Amir Finch-Martin (M.A. Student) & Amanda Krische (M.A. Student) -Dancing Chamber Music: Hyper-Empathetic Improvisation & The Hapticality Of The Ensemble
12:25-1:00 - Lunch
1:00-1:45 - Session 3
Mateo Rodriguez-Hurtado (M.A. '20) - Reified Rhapsodies: Femme of Color Frequencies via La Lupe and Rita Moreno
Raven Malouf-Renning (M.A. ‘25) - Entering the Crip Portal: Using the Crip Tarot Card as an Inroad to Inclusive Dance Practice
Savyon Vaknin (Ph.D. Student, M.A. '24) & Joey Mauro (M.A. '24) - Organizing Meeting: A Call for Community Praxis
1:55-2:40 - Session 4
Taylor C. Black (Ph.D. '26) - Internet Bad? A performance studies approach to internet culture research
Nicki Yost (M.A. '25) - “Here Come the (Indianapolis) Clowns”: A Lecture Performed in 7 Innings
Alex Belluck (M.A. Student) - Breathing as Labor and Liberation
2:50-4:15 - Keynote
Joshua Chambers-Letson (PS Ph.D. '09) - One More Try, or, Teacher, There Are Things that I Don’t Want to Learn
4:15 - Reception
All Day - Installation
Noah Ortega (M.A. '16) - the triple empathy problem