Laura Edmondson

Laura Edmondson is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Theater, where she teaches courses on postcolonial African drama, human rights and performance, and world theater history. She has published widely on East and Central African theater and performance, including articles in Theatre Journal, Theatre Research International, TDR, and the anthologies African Performance Arts (Routledge 2002) and Violence Performed (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Her book, Performance and Politics in Tanzania: The Nation on Stage, was published by Indiana University Press in 2007. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, and the Fulbright Program. Her second book, Trauma, Inc.: The Performance of Violence in Central Africa (forthcoming in 2018, Indiana University Press), explores the commodification of trauma through performance and cultural production in northern Uganda, postgenocide Rwanda, and the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As a playwright, she has collaborated in the creation of Forged in Fire with Ugandan performer Okello Kelo Sam and Tanzanian musician Robert Ajwang, which integrates music, dance, and text to explore Okello's experiences of the LRA conflict in northern Uganda. Forged in Fire was produced at the Voorhees Theatre (Brooklyn) in 2015; excerpts of the play have been published in Refugee Performance (Intellect Books and the University of Chicago Press, 2012). Prior to coming to Dartmouth, she held positions at the University of Georgia and Florida State University. She has also taught at the Bagamoyo College of Arts in Tanzania and in the Department of Literature at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.