Della Pollock
Professor
Performance and Cultural Studies
Current Research: Currently working on Radical Narrative:
Performing Pain, an intimate ethnography of living with chronic and/or
traumatic pain, based on informal interviews, and narrative and
cultural critique. The book at once embraces and challenges
assumptions about the incommunicability of pain.
Also developing a teaching/research project
with the support of a Ueltschi service-learning grant, centered in a
revision of 562: Performance and Oral History. Over a
three year period, the course will involve students in service,
participant, interview, and collaborative performance relationships
with members of local African American churches with the aim of
understanding the nature and history of church communities in the wake
of desegregation (following on an earlier incarnation of the course
focussed on desegregation and the "inner life" of high
schools).
Recent Publications: Ed., Remembering: Oral History
Performance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); assoc. ed.,
Sage Handbook of Performance Studies, including chapter
contributions: "Performance Trouble," an introduction to
performance theory, and "Memory, Remembering, and Histories of
Change: A Performance Praxis." Forthcoming: "The
Performative 'I,'" Cultural Studies<>Critical Methodologies and
"Marking New Directions in Performance Ethnography," Text and
Performance Quarterly. Editorial: co-editor with Lawrence
Grossberg, Cultural Studies.
Courses Regularly Taught: Introduction to Literature in
Performance; Introduction to Performance Ethnography; Politics of
Performance; Performance and Oral History; Seminar in Performance and
Cultural Studies; Seminar in Performance and History:
Remembering; Seminar in Problems in Contemporary Performance
Theory; Seminar in the Body in Performance.
Faculty affiliate: Sexuality Studies, Cultural Studies,
Women's Studies, Folklore.
Areas of Specialization: Brechtian aesthetics and performance
for social change; oral history in and as performance; the performance
of memory; body politics, feminist/cultural theory; performing
writing.
Honors: 2005 Institute for the Arts and
Humanities, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:
Leadership Fellow
1998 National Communication Association: Lilla
Heston Award for Performance Scholarship
1996 University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill: Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
Professional Service: Past chair of the Performance
Studies Division, National Communication Association; Editorial
boards: Text and Performance Quarterly, Cultural
Studies<>Critical Methodologies, Communication and Critical
Cultural Studies, Southern Communication Journal; Cultural Studies
Annual. University: Founding director University Program in
Cultural Studies; Chancellor’s Advisory Committee, 2001-2004 (Chair,
2003-04); Robertson Scholars Faculty Partner; current advisory
boards: Institute for the Arts and Humanities; Honors; Institute
for African American Research; University Program in Cultural
Studies.
Current/Recent Work with Graduate Students: Recent PhDs:
2005 Willink, K. “Desegregation, Dialogue, and
Difference: Remembering Camden County, NC.”
2005 Thomson, D. “Fat Suit: The
Interperformative Possibilities of Obesity Lawsuits.”
2004 Hall, R. “Danger and Desire:
Instrumental Realism in the History of the Wanted
Poster.”
2003 Odendahl, J. “Bodies of Evidence:
Portraits of Post-Feminine Performance.”
Current projects (exams complete, proposals approved):
Tes Thraves: youth documentary, intergenerational memory, and the
Monacan "homecoming" ritual; Rivka Eisner: performance and
politics of memory among former women political prisoners in
Vietnam.

