Pedagogy
An Assistant Professor of Acting and Directing at Vanderbilt University, Dr. Tift has taught courses in Theatre and Film Studies, Women’s Studies and Communication Arts. She has taught at the University of Georgia, Kennesaw State University, and Georgia Southern University. She has given guest lectures and performance workshops at Emory University at Oxford College, Brandeis University, the University of Georgia, the University of Florida, Georgia Southern University, the University of Louisville, and the University of Nevada at Reno. In 2023, Tift was selected as a Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Vanderbilt. In 2021, she was awarded a COVID-19 Innovative Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University. Tift’s teaching approach is a hybrid style that emphasizes the intersections of history, theory, and practice of performance and writing dramatic literature. With her natural ability to communicate with students from varied backgrounds at their level of understanding, Tift is a popular professor and private coach.
Research
Dr. Tift’s research areas are African Diaspora performance, queer-of-color performance, black feminist and black lesbian-feminist theatre and performance, Women’s and Gender Studies, Black Queer Studies, Theatre for Social Change, Solo Performance, Acting Theory and Practice, and Performance Literature. Her research on Black Queer Feminist Performance has been acknowledged for its merit by The Princeton Society of Fellows and The Ford Foundation. In 2016, her dissertation African American Lesbian Identity in Performance was awarded a highly-competitive Dissertation Completion Award from the University of Georgia. She is currently drafting the manuscript for her first scholarly book and her first performance novel.
Publications
BOOKS (in progress)
A Conditional Embrace: Black Queer Feminism in Theatre and Performance.
Audele: A Performance Novel.
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES
“Queering the Politics of Black Respectability in Plays of the Black Revolutionary Theatre.” Inaugural Issue: Crossroads. The Black Theatre Review, Vol. 1, Issue 1 (July 2022). Read
“Flyin’ High in Flyin’ West: Representing 19th Century African American Women in Performance.” Special Issue: Black Performance. Frontiers, a Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol. 42, Issue 1 (May 2021): 161-77. Read
“Embodying Intersections: The Performance Poetry of Staceyann Chin and Lenelle Moïse.” New England Theatre Journal, Vol. 29, Issue 1 (October 2018): 73-92.
ESSAYS
“Black Theatre in the Hands of Generation X.” Black Masks, Vol. 17, Issue 6 (August/September 2006): 9, 14.
BOOK CHAPTERS
“Making Colors: A Black Feminist Experiment in Solo Performance.” In Applied Theatre and Racial Justice: Radical Imaginings for Just Communities (forthcoming, Routledge Press, 2023).
“These Truths Will Go No Further: Exploring Black Women’s ‘Motherwork’ in Contemporary Playmaking.” In M(other) Perspectives: Staging the Maternal in 21st Century Theatre & Performance (Routledge Press, 2023).
BOOK REVIEWS
Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry by Soyica Diggs Colbert. Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Vol. 34, No. 1 (December 2021). Read
solo/black/woman by E. Patrick Johnson and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, editors. Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre, and Performance, Vol. 2, No. 2 (March 2016): 1-3. Read
Wandering: Philosophical Performances of Racial and Sexual Freedom by Sarah J. Cervenak. Theatre Journal, Vol. 67, Issue 4 (December 2015): 751-52. Read
Performing Queer Latinidad: dance sexuality, politics by Ramón H. Rivera-Servera. Theatre Journal, Vol. 66, Issue 2 (May 2014): 311-12.