Dr. Kristyl D. Tift is a scholar-artist and educator. She holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies and an Advanced Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies (University of Georgia); an MFA in Acting (The New School); and a BA in Theatre with a Music Minor (Georgia Southern University). She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre at Vanderbilt University.

An interdisciplinary historian, theorist and critic, Tift’s areas of research include African Diaspora Performance, Black Queer Feminist Performance; Art for Social Change; and Applied Dramaturgy. She has published articles and book reviews in Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, The Black Theatre Review, New England Theatre Journal, Theatre Journal, and the Journal of American Drama and Theatre. Her book, A Conditional Embrace: Black Queer Feminism in Performance, is being published by The Ohio State University Press for its Black Performance and Cultural Criticism series (edited by E. Patrick Johnson). It will be in print in July 2026. This research been recognized by the Princeton Society of Fellows and The Ford Foundation, and supported through grants from the American Theatre and Drama Society, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Georgia.

With 14 years of experience teaching in higher education, Tift has taught courses in Women’s Studies, Theatre Studies, Performance Studies, and Communication Arts departments. (From 2008 to 2011, she taught K-3 students in Drama, Music, and Movement.) For her teaching excellence, she has received awards from Vanderbilt University and the University of Georgia.

A multitalented performing artist, Tift (as Kristyl Dawn Tift) has acted, sang, and danced in theatre productions in New York and Atlanta. She is also acts professionally in film, television, and voiceover projects that relate to her research in Black Performance. Represented by Houghton Talent, she has booked roles on acclaimed series including “Genius:MLK/X”, “Black Lightning”, and “Greenleaf”. She was awarded an Earphones Award for her narration of Brandy Colbert’s young adult non-fiction novel Black Birds In the Sky: The Story and Legacy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre (HarperAudio). She has also narrated journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett ’s Mob Rule in New Orleans and Southern Horrors & The Red Record for the Amazon Classics series. A singer-songwriter, Tift released an independent EP Still Light.