A humanist
in practice
Ayanna Thompson
Practicing humanities research through collaboration.
Ayanna Thompson is a scholar of Shakespeare, race, and performance. She is the author of many books including Blackface and Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America. A Regents Professor of English and executive director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.
She works in major cultural institutions including The Public Theater, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Theater for a New Audience, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and more to put humanities research into action.
“Blackface reveals a legacy of performance that is pointed and detrimental, known but purposely forgotten. Thompson's analysis is exquisite and exact. A new entry for the historical record.”
– Ibram X. Kendi, Founding Director, Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, and author of How to Be An Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning
Scholar of race and performance
Although she is frequently labeled a “Shakespeare scholar,” a more adequate label for Ayanna Thompson is something closer to a “performance race scholar.” Thompson’s research employs historicist, theoretical, pedagogical, and practical lenses to ask how race operates in performance and as a performance.
Theater practitioner
A lover of live theater, Ayanna Thompson works on Shakespearean productions and new works in equal measures. Because her scholarly research focuses on how race operates in performance and as a performance, she is widely sought after by theater companies, directors, and actors to discuss how race (can, should, and does) makes meaning onstage.
RaceB4Race
An initiative of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance studies, RaceB4Race® is an ongoing conference series and professional network community by and for scholars of color working on issues of race in premodern literature, history and culture. RaceB4Race centers the expertise, perspectives, and sociopolitical interests of BIPOC scholars, whose work seeks to expand critical race theory.
