Ryan Platt holds a B.A. in French Studies and Theatre & Dance from Amherst College and an M.A. in Theatre Arts from Cornell University, where he is presently a Ph.D. candidate.  His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in PAJ,Theatre Journal, and Dance Research Journal. His dissertation began on a 2007-8 DAAD Research Grant in Germany to study work by William Forsythe, which he intends to integrate into his ongoing articulation of a cinematic mode of performance as exemplified in three interdisciplinary female artists of the 1970s.  Its most recent working title is After Aura: Media, Movement, and the Performance of Withdrawal.

As a teacher, Ryan is drawn to a philosophy that grounds itself in the materials and formal impulses of experimental theatre, performance, and dance, but also responds to the urgency of cultivating contact with an expanded literary and artistic sphere. This double commitment to theatre history and interdisciplinary study characterized his most two recently designed courses at Cornell, “Mourning Representation: The Aesthetics of AIDS” and “Literary Bodies, Literal Bodies: Correspondences in 20th Century Dance and Fiction.” Reflecting an emergent interest in intersections between poetry and drama– especially 20th-century drama– he is expanded his repertoire of interdisciplinary courses in spring 2010 to include a new class, “Noble Words and Dastardly Deeds: Poetic Expression in Modern Drama.”

A few research interests: Theatre History, Dance Studies, Performance Theory, Media Art and Theory, Sound Art, Gender Studies, Poetry and Performance, Translation

cirriculum vitae