Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren
Associate Professor
B.A., Psychology, Antioch University
M.A.L.S., Literature and movement, Wesleyan University
M.F.A., Dance, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Ph.D., Performance Studies, New York University
Office: UW2 - 330
Phone: 425.352.3491
Email: kkochhar@uwb.edu
Mailing: 358511, 11136 NE 180th Street, Bothell, WA 98011-1713
Teaching
In the classroom I see learning as a dynamic process that can emerge through attention to group process, the kinesthetic dimension, the development of critical and creative thinking, and the critique of culture. The classroom often acts as an artistic space that generates new social forms and ideas.
Recent Courses Taught
BLS 318 Performance, Community, Identity and Everyday Life ...
BLS 322 Topics in Performance Studies: Garbage as Art
BIS 450 Performance and Healing
Research/Scholarship
My research focuses on how artistic practices lead to personal and social change. I am particularly interested in cross-cultural relationships between disability and ethnic communities, the moving body, the performance of citizenship in South Asian diasporic theater, and artistic and community-based theater practices. Previous work includes articles on performance and deafness, South Asian identity and performance, and the Surrealist game "The Exquisite Corpse." The book I am currently working on addresses trans-atlantic connections among South Asian diasporic performances, with examples from the United States, England, and Trinidad. Other research deals with questions of disability aesthetics, performance and the environment, and experimental art practice.
Selected Publications
Books
- New Formations of Cultural Studies: Collaboration, Practice, Research. (Editor, with Bruce Burgett and Miriam Bartha) A collection of writings by and conversations with Cultural Studies Praxis Collective invited speakers Pam Korza, Randy Martin, Ien Ang, E. Patrick Johnson, and Sonja Kuftinec. (in progress)
- Hearing Difference: The Third Ear in Experimental, Deaf and Multicultural Theater. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, May 2006.
- The Exquisite Corpse: Collaboration, Creativity, and the World's Most Popular Parlor Game. Lead editor (with Davis Schneiderman and Tom Denliger), University of Nebraska Press (forthcoming, Fall 2009).
Articles
- "Traces and Mappings: Revising Identity through Performance," Postcolonialism and Education: ed Derek Mulenga. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. (Forthcoming)
- "Performing Blackness: Transversal Diasporas Crisscrossing the Atlantic," Performance Research International, December 2007.
- "Disability," American Studies Keywords, Eds. Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler. New York: NYU Press, 2007.
- "Hearing Difference across Theaters," Theater Journal. October 2006: 417-436.
- "At the Edge of Hearing: The Third Ear and the Performance of Difference," Aural Cultures, Ed. Jim Drobnik, Toronto: XYZ Books, 2004.
- "Towards a Communal Body of Art: the Exquisite Corpse and Augusto Boal's Theater,"Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities-Special Issue on Aesthetics, Ed. Gary Banham. Spring 2002: 217-225.
- "Kabuki, Bharata Natyam, and the National Theater of the Deaf," Journal of American Drama and Theater, Spring 2002: 35-43.
- "Between Two Worlds: The Emerging Aesthetic of the National Theater of the Deaf,"Peering Behind the Curtain. Eds. Kimball King and Tom McFahy. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Current Administrative Activities
- Executive Secretary: International Advisory Board for GLOSS 2008, a Global Summit on Sustainable Development and Biodiversity, Raipur, India (December 2008).
- Facilitator: Masters of Arts in Cultural Studies (2007-to present)
- Co-director (with Bruce Burgett): Cultural Studies Praxis Collective and Placing the Humanities (2004-2008)
- Founding Director of the UWB Empty Suitcase Theater Company (2003-to present)
Other Selected Accomplishments
- Performance: "Scratching Across the Memory Lines," Initiation Festival, Singapore, Nov 23, 2007.
- Project Director for the First Disability and Deaf Arts Fest at UW (May 2007)
- Project Director for Sci-Arts Eco-Culture Conference (2003-2005; Conference held May 2005)
