I am an Assistant Professor in Digital Writing in the Department of English at Concordia University.
My research focuses on multiple interconnected areas: performance studies; sport and performance; Broadway musical theatre; affect theory; spectacle performance from 1850 to the present in the global north; performing gender and sexuality; the socio-cultural study of sport and women’s sport; performative utterances; theatre audience studies; and the impacts of community-engaged writing, theatre, and film projects.
I am passionate about researching the epistemological, affective, cultural, and socio-political effects of different types of popular contemporary performance for both performers and audience members; invested in exploring the relationship between discourse, embodiment, and operations of power in the twenty-first century; and curious about experimenting with, and learning about, the impacts of writing pedagogy and practice.
Currently, I teach courses in professional writing, creative writing, and video games as literature in the Department of English at Concordia University. Previously, I have taught courses in theatre history and theory, performance studies, film studies, and English literature. I also manage a blog on activist teaching. If you want to learn more about my teaching or having teaching-related questions, please visit the Concordia English Department website.
Degrees: B.A., Film Studies, University of British Columbia; M.A., Cinema Studies, University of Toronto; M.A., Theatre Studies, University of British Columbia; PhD, English with an emphasis in Performance Studies, Simon Fraser University
Postdoctoral Fellowships: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, McGill, Department of English, 2019-2021; Le Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la littérature et la culture québécoises, 2020-2021
Awards and Recognitions
“Theoretical Exchanges: The Structuring of Practice in Cultural Performance Genres and the Case of Canadian Women’s Basketball” won the Robert G. Lawrence Prize for Best Paper by an Emerging Scholar at the 2018 Canadian Association for Theatre Research Conference.
“The 2012 Olympic Badminton Scandal: Match-Fixing, Code of Condcut Documents, and Women’s Sport” was a finalist for Best Article of the Year for The International Journal of Sport History in 2018.
BIO
Kelsey Blair is an Assistant Professor in Digital Writing in the Department of English at Concordia University. A theatre, performance, and cultural studies scholar, her articles have been published in journals including the International Journal of Sport History, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theatre Research in Canada, Studies in Musical Theatre, Language and Literacy, and Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance. She also has chapters in several edited collections published by Routledge and is a co-editor of the anthology Basically Queer: An Intergenerational Guide to LGBTQA2S+ Lives published by Peter Lang. Additionally, she is a co-director of the Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research, the managing editor of the blog the Activist Classroom, a director for several not-for-profit boards, and the author of four award winning young adult sport fiction novels.
Kelsey Blair 